What do whale experts and alien hunters have in common?More than you expected.
In a recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ, scientists from the University of California, Davis, the Alaska Whales** Society, and SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence) collaborated.
Their mission: to communicate with whales. And that's what they did.
In a landmark experiment, the team had a 20-minute conversation with a humpback whale named Twain in their own words.
Twain and scientists don't talk about the weather or the latest fish gossip – we're still a long way from knowing this level.
However, what has happened is extraordinary.
Talk to whales
Scientists sailed a ship off the coast of Alaska to send what it called "connecting" to the ocean to see if any whales would respond.
Liaison is similar to a human greeting. Lead author McCohen, a professor at the University of California, Davis' School of Veterinary Medicine, told reporters that whales use them to call other whales or let the other party know that they are there.
Sharp, co-author and principal researcher of the Alaska Whales Society, told reporters, "They are one of the most common signals in the humpback whale social sound repertoire. ”
Sure enough, Twain swam to the boat and circled around. Over the next 20 minutes, the scientists sent out 36 different contacts** at different intervals, and Twain responded each time**, even very much in line with the time interval.
This means that if scientists wait 10 seconds to give Tween back, it will also wait 10 seconds to respond. This type of interval matching suggests that Twain was communicating intentionally.
"We believe this is the first time this kind of communication has been conducted between humans and humpback whales in the 'language' of humpback whales," McColn said in a statement. ”
The calls came from humpback whales, and researchers recorded the calls of a small group of whales the day before they met. Twain was included in the group, so Twain may have been responding to his own signals.
"We've probably been ** its own greetings to it," Sharp said. ”
So, what does this have to do with talking to aliens?
Doyle, the lead researcher at the SETI Institute and co-author of the **, said that it turned out that Twain's behavior could resemble the way intelligent alien races search for humans.
Communicate with aliens
"An important assumption in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that aliens will be interested in contact and will therefore target human recipients," Doyle said in a statement. It's a bit like Twain's response to the scientist's connection**.
Doyle and his colleagues at SETI are working with whale and animal experts at UC Davis and the Alaska Whale Society to create smart filters to help them find extraterrestrial intelligence.
If aliens are there, sending us signals, trying to communicate, we might miss them if we don't know what to look for.
By refining these smart filters, scientists can use them to identify intelligent signals from space in an attempt to make first contact with an alien race.
There are all sorts of intelligent beings on this planet, and by studying them, we can better understand what extraterrestrial intelligent beings might look like, as they won't be exactly like ours. ”。
The study is also testing whether extraterrestrial intelligent life will find us. Whale studies have shown that if you're smart, curiosity will follow, and you'll want to engage with it.
Scientists say they hope to do similar research on other intelligent animals on Earth, including other cetaceans such as dolphins, predators that hunt cooperatively, and other highly social species such as mongooses and elephants.
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