by Her head above water, Wikie the killer whale looks at the human trainer next to her pool, listens, then loudly vocalises: "Hello."
It is not a perfect imitation, but, astonishingly, recognisable.
It is the first scientific demonstration of an orca mimicking human words, which also included "Amy"—the name of Wikie's handler—"Bye-Bye", and "One-Two-Three".
"We were not expecting a perfect match, like a parrot," researcher Jose Abramson of the Complutense University of Madrid said of the experiment reported Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Yet in a trial with six different words or phrases, some of Wikie's attempts were "a very high quality match", especially given that orcas' vocal anatomy is "totally different" to ours.
Source
It is not a perfect imitation, but, astonishingly, recognisable.
It is the first scientific demonstration of an orca mimicking human words, which also included "Amy"—the name of Wikie's handler—"Bye-Bye", and "One-Two-Three".
"We were not expecting a perfect match, like a parrot," researcher Jose Abramson of the Complutense University of Madrid said of the experiment reported Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Yet in a trial with six different words or phrases, some of Wikie's attempts were "a very high quality match", especially given that orcas' vocal anatomy is "totally different" to ours.
Source
