A terrifying video capturing orcas imitating human speech has left many viewers deeply unsettled.
Killer whales, the largest dolphin species and apex predators, possess remarkable intelligence, including the ability to mimic human speech.
This discovery was made by a team of researchers from Germany, Spain, the UK, and Chile, who conducted a study into the vocal capabilities of orcas and published their findings in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, in 2018.
“We wanted to see how flexible a killer whale can be in copying sounds,” Josep Call, professor in evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St Andrews and study co-author, told The Guardian.
“We thought what would be really convincing is to present them with something that is not in their repertoire – and in this case ‘hello’ [is] not what a killer whale would say,” he added.
The team trained Wikie, a 14-year-old female orca living in an aquarium in France, to copy three sounds made by her three-year-old calf, and then tested her ability to imitate five unfamiliar orca sounds.
Wikie was then exposed to three orca sounds and six human sounds, including the words "hello," "Amy," "ah ha," "one, two," and "bye-bye".
The team was amazed to discover that the orca was able to quickly replicate the sounds, successfully mimicking two on the very first attempt.
Listen to the recording below:Recordings of Wikie's attempts to mimic human speech have been released on social media, with some listeners finding them "terrifying".
One user said: "This is as terrifying as it is hilarious," while another quipped: "Ok, that second hello was a little demonic. Was that really an orca, or the Devil speaking through a ghost box LOL The funniest and scariest thing EVER!"
"Now I’m scared," a third wrote, and a fourth added: "OK that's the creepiest f'ing thing I've ever heard."
However, others were amazed at the orca's ability. "That’s genuinely amazing," one person said. "These giants are much smarter than we think....amazing," a second chimed in.
"Certainly a momentous occasion discovering another mammal that can enunciate human language. This could be significant given the high level of intelligence orcas have?" someone else shared.
Call, co-author of the study paper, said the findings offered the first evidence that orcas possess the cognitive ability of vocal imitation.
“I think here we have the first evidence that killer whales may be learning sounds by vocal imitation, and this is something that could be the basis of the dialects we observe in the wild – it is plausible,” Call explained.
"Even though the morphology [of orcas] is so different, they can still produce a sound that comes close to what another species, in this case, us, can produce," he added.
Call shared that the team has no evidence that the sea animals "understand what their ‘hello’ stands for," and revealed that more trials would need to be carried out with wild orcas to learn more about how they learn sounds.