Humpback whales are some of the most intelligent creatures humans have ever had the chance to observe. However, researchers have encountered a bit of a conundrum with these massive sea-bound creatures. According to studies published in the past few years, humpback whales may be trying to communicate with humans.
Previous research into this phenomenon has shown that the potential for humans to talk to these massive mammals exists. An earlier study shows that scientists with the SETI Institute were able to have a “conversation” with a humpback whale named Twain by playing whale calls through an underwater speaker.
Twain responded to the calls in its own fashion. However, that study didn’t look at how these creatures might try to communicate with humans voluntarily, as the communication was always previously engineered by researchers. Now, a new study looks at just how likely it is for humpback whales to try to communicate with humans on their own.
The research was led by SETI scientists, and it shows that the whales appear to make large rings of bubbles when having friendly encounters with humans, likely in an attempt to communicate with us somehow. These forms of nonverbal communication are important to study, too, because they could one day be key to helping us talk to another species, if space exploration ever leads to the discovery of new lifeforms beyond those on our own planet.
You can see evidence of the SETI team’s conversation with Twain in the video embedded above. While it’s unlikely anything like AI will help us decode the meaning of these messages anytime soon, researchers will no doubt continue to work on uncovering the meaning behind these attempts to communicate.
Whether or not we’ll ever actually be able to have a conversation with our dogs, or any other animal, for that matter, is still very unlikely, at least based on the technology we have access to today. But that’s the thing about the future. We’re constantly developing new technology that could one day unlock these capabilities and let whales communicate with humans more openly.
