Captive Orca's Ability to Mimic Human Speech Amazes Researchers and Angers Animal Lovers

Wikie the killer whale is making waves for being the first orca caught on camera mimicking human speech.

Video of the feat shows the whale, who lives at Marineland Aquarium in Antibes, France, repeating after one of her handlers with vocalizations that sound similar to the words “Hello,” “Bye Bye” and “One, Two, Three.”

According to AFP, this is a first of its kind scientific demonstration that is especially exciting to researchers because Wikie was able to produce the human sounds even though the vocal anatomy of a human is far different from that of a killer whale.

Wikie was chosen for this project by Jose Abramson of the Complutense University of Madrid and a team because she had already been trained to perform multiple tricks, including copying her handler.

Using this conditioning, the researchers started off by having the orca mimic the sound of other killer whales from different families with different dialects and then began to work with English words.

While Wikie’s copycat attempts aren’t perfect, they are impressive and show to Abramson and his team that orcas are excellent imitators, a sign of high intelligence.

“One of the main things that fired the evolution of human intelligence is the ability to have social learning, to imitate, and to have culture,” Abramson said. “So if you find that other species have also the capacity for social learning, and of complex social learning that could be imitation or teaching, you expect a lot of flexibility in that species.”

Many are marveling at Wikie’s new skill and what it means, but animal rights groups are not as impressed.

“Orcas have always had their own complex means of communicating with each other using a language that humans can’t understand, and it’s now been shown that in captivity, they try to get our attention by carefully mimicking human speech,” Elisa Allen, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said in a statement. “In the wild – where they belong – each orca family unit, or pod, has its own culture and a unique group dialect, while the great whales sing their history and add a bit every year.”

The fact that Wikie was showing off her natural talents in a man-made space was not lost on PETA.

“How deeply ironic that this research, which speaks volumes of the emotional intelligence of orcas, was conducted in a marine park’s cement cell, where they’re imprisoned and denied everything that’s natural and important to them in order to make money from tourists,” Allen continues. “And how sad that while the orca Wikie was being studied, all she could do – other than try to get the researchers’ attention in a way that humans themselves can’t even figure out how to reciprocate – was swim in tight circles in her own diluted waste.”

PETA, with help from Bob Barker, and several other animal activist groups are working to have captive orcas released into a sea sanctuary where they can live out their lives with more space by the ocean and without the demands to perform for entertainment.