A killer whale has astounded scientists by learning to “speak” human words through its blowhole.
Wikie, a 16-year-old captive orca living in a marine theme park, can be heard in recordings mimicking words such as “hello” and counting “one, two, three”.
The sounds emerge as parrot-like squawks, shrill whistles or raspberries through her blowhole, but most are clear enough to understand.
Now the scientist who led the research believes basic “conversations” with Wikie may one day be possible.
Dr Jose Abramson, from Complutense de Madrid University in Spain, said: “Yes, it’s conceivable. It has been done before with a famous grey parrot and dolphins using American sign language, sentences like ‘bring me this object’ or ‘put this object above or below the other’.
“But you have to be careful about imposing our human concepts on animals. We will gain more if we try to understand the natural way each species communicates in its environment than if we try to teach a human language.”
Research took place at Wikie’s home at Marineland in Antibes, France, two years ago. The female orca, who was born at the park and has had two sons, was taught to copy sounds and words.
The killer whale “spoke” while partially immersed with its blowhole exposed to the air. Human words and phrases it tried to copy included “ah-ah”, “hello”, “bye-bye”, “Amy” and “one, two, three”.
Speech recognition software was used to test how well it performed.
Wild orcas are known to live in groups with unique “dialects” – learning sounds used for communication that are kept within a particular population.