Killer Whales Are Learning How To Speak English: No Way This Goes Poorly
(CNN)From the water, a high-pitched squeak calls out "hello" but the sound is not coming from a human, it's a whale.
A team of international researchers have taught a female orca whale to imitate human speech, documenting what is considered to be a world first in a paper published Wednesday.
Using Wikie the whale, who lives at the Marineland Aquarium in southern France as their test subject, scientists discovered a whale could learn new vocalizations by imitating its trainer.
Wikie was able to repeat a handful of words including "hello," "bye bye," "one, two" and "Amy."
"Whether they could use this vocalization, these sounds they produce, whether they could use them to interact with humans or with other killer whales is a an open question, it's a fascinating question,"
Full story here.
This is some concerning news to be hidden in the netherworld of small CNN headlines: whales are learning English. Not just any whale either: we’re talking killer whales, baby. Orcas. We can't stop doing dumb shit when it comes to nature. Is nobody that concerned about this? I feel like this should be much bigger news. Let’s not forget, while whales are for some reason considered gentle creatures- they are, in fact, giant killers. Holding their breath for longer than us and being better swimmers already puts these monsters above us on the food chain; and need I mention that “killer” is in the name? I understand how at first this is a cool thing, but it has repercussions that far outweigh any benefit.
Okay cool, we learned that we could hypothetically teach whales to talk. Good to know. We’ll keep that one in the back pocket. Let’s stop teaching them to talk now! There’s no reason for whales to speak English, and all that it’s going to lead to is some massive bummer for us. We’ve all seen this movie, folks. I think this is basically just the plot of the new Planet Of The Apes trilogy: see what happened when we taught all those monkeys to talk?
Ignore me, and the premier blog on wildlife danger, and see what happens: your kids are going to be called down to the water’s edge by the sweet cooing of a mysterious voice speaking English, and they’re gonna get fucking eaten by a bunch of belugas that we thought it would be fun to teach Chaucer.
