Scientists claim they have had a 20-minute conversation with a whale!

Say it could pave the way for conversations with aliens.

JUNEAU, Alaska (PNN) - December 18, 2023 - It might sound like a scene out of Avatar: The Way of Water.

But scientists claim it's now possible to have a conversation with a whale, following a 20-minute chat with a humpback whale in Southeast Alaska.

A 38-year-old whale named Twain “spoke” with the researchers from the SETI Institute and University of Kalifornia Davis by responding to a pre-recorded “contact call”.

This marks the first communication between humans and whales in their own language, according to the team.

Looking ahead, the researchers say the conversation could pave the way for interactions with aliens in the future.

In the study, researchers from SETI studied how whales communicate in the hopes of developing “intelligence filters” as part of the search for alien life.

The scientists broadcast a type of greeting call called a “whup/throp” through underwater speakers.

When the call was played through the water, Twain approached the boat and responded with a greeting call of her own.

Importantly, the scientists found that Twain was changing the frequency of her own calls in response to the researchers' broadcast.

According to lead author, Dr. Brenda McCowan of UC Davis, this mirroring behavior shows that the whale was engaging in a type of interactive conversation with the recorded call.

Dr. McCowan said, “We believe this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback ‘language’.”

In their research paper, Dr. McGowan and her co-authors suggest that Twain was motivated to reply by “excitement and possibly the onset of agitation”.

However, they also point out that the kind of “behavioral synchrony” exhibited by the whale is associated with bonding and group cohesion.

This, according to the authors, suggests that Twain was actively engaged in a communicative exchange.

The researchers' ultimate goal is not to speak with whales, but with even stranger forms of life.

Just as another scientist might look at Antarctica as a proxy for Mars or other alien environments, SETI researchers look on Earth to find stand-ins for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

In the absence of any aliens, the researchers hope to use whales to develop strategies for non-human communication.

Humpback whales make such a good alien proxy because of their extremely high intelligence and powers of communication.

Their huge brains have large regions for processing auditory information and the watery environment lets them broadcast signals over vast distances.

Dr. Fred Sharpe of the Alaska Whale Foundation says, “Humpback whales are extremely intelligent, have complex social systems, make tools - nets out of bubbles to catch fish - and communicate extensively with both songs and social calls.”

This means that by learning how to find information within the calls of whales, scientists might one day be able to make sense of communications from aliens.

Dr. Laurence Doyle of the SETI Institute says, “Because of current limitations on technology, an important assumption of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that extraterrestrials will be interested in making contact and so target human receivers.”

He adds that “this important assumption is certainly supported by the behavior of humpback whales.”

Previously, SETI has attempted to find extra-terrestrial life by listening in to radio signals arriving on Earth.

The theory is that a highly advanced alien civilization might be interested in communicating with other planets and so would beam out information in high-energy pulses.

Most recently, this has centered on a theory that there may be a pulsating beacon near the center of the Milky Way, broadcasting information from aliens.

However, since we have no way of knowing how aliens might communicate, SETI focuses on developing tools to scan for signals of intelligence within the constant background noise of space.