Beluga Whale Learns to Talk

Most of us know that dolphins speak their own language - and now it looks like they’re not the only deep-sea creatures capable of a chat: a beluga whale has been taught to talk.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on September 08 2008

Most of us know that dolphins speak their own language - and now it looks like they’re not the only deep-sea creatures capable of a chat.

For the past five years, Takashi Murayama, a professor at Japan’s Tokai University, has been working on a project with a 23-year-old beluga whale named Nack. Using objects like a bucket, a pair of diving goggles, and a pair of diving fins, Murayama has trained the whale to create specific sounds to identify each prop.

“Beluga whales are very intelligent, friendly and they enjoy being trained in this way,” he told the Telegraph. “Right now Nack only knows three words, but we are working on the whale recognizing different people and giving them a sound as well.”

Nack is the first whale that’s been proven to create identifiable sounds to refer to specific objects. But Murayama doesn’t plan to stop with this breakthrough - he’s hoping that over time, Nack will pick up some more advanced conversational skills. “We want to teach it to express likes and dislikes, something that is interesting instead of boring, and be able to say if something is painful,” he said.

We can’t wait to hear what Nack thinks of Sarah Palin.

Filed under: Animals and Pets, General Interest, Science,

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