🌅 Talking to a Whale to Meet E.T.

SOURCE

McCowan et al. (2023)

WHAT TO KNOW

• Scientists at the SETI Institute used an underwater speaker to have a 20-minute “conversation” with a humpback whale named Twain off the coast of Alaska in August 2021. The researchers played the same humpback whale “contact call” (essentially a greeting) 36 times at different intervals over the 20-minute period, which Twain responded to and matched the timing of, responding in what the team described as an intentional “conversational” style.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The scientists didn’t talk to a whale just to prove they could, the team believes the exchange could provide insights into how humans may one day communicate with extraterrestrial life. The researchers chose humpback whales because their intricate communication system, which includes a variety of vocalizations, like songs, social calls, and signals for particular situations, offers a unique opportunity to study intelligent communication in non-human species.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The work is led by the Whale-SETI team at the SETI Institute, which, similar to studying Antarctica as a proxy for Mars, has been studying humpback whale communication to understand extraterrestrial intelligence. The team is using the whale calls to develop “intelligence filters” that can be applied to any extraterrestrial signals humans may receive.