[Article initialement publié en avril 2024]
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This meeting between men and a whale occurred in 2021, off the coast of southeast Alaska.
An experience with successful whales
From their boat to the cut engine, the researchers distributed thanks to a speaker a “Throp”, a cry of contact to attract a group of whales.
One of them then separated from the group to approach the boat, intrigued. This 38 -year -old whale who answered their call, they nicknamed Twain.
Twain turned around the boat by emitting sounds in response to researchers for about twenty minutes. The recorded sounds that the latter broadcast had been issued by the Twain family, the whale was therefore able to recognize them.
Researchers belong to the Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) research team. Their objective is to succeed in understanding communication but also the intelligence of whales.
Incredible capacities
Hearing is the most developed meaning in whales. More useful than sight, the sound is very easily diffused underwater. Pulsations and grunts allow cetaceans to dialogue with each other.
It should be noted that several species of whales have developed a particular larynx which can produce very low frequency sounds which diffuse easily underwater. They serve them to communicate. Blue whales, for example, emit frequencies as low as 12.5 Hz, classified in the category of infrasounds and below the human hearing threshold.
Among the other whales with this special larynx, there are bastard whales, including humpback whales, free whales and blue whales.
Other species for them use soft pulses and whistles to communicate. There are sperm whales, porpoises, tooth whales …
A communication that is refined
You should know that the language of cetaceans continues to improve. It is the result of an evolution that started 50 million years ago. Whales can now produce more complex sounds that are useful to them on a daily basis.
Indeed, they allow them to find partners and food, to defend their territory and their resources but also to avoid predators or to navigate. It would seem that there are many dialects which differ according to the places where the whales live.
The songs of whales are very complex. Many researchers have tried to study them over the years.
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