
Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals - okket
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/31/orcas-killer-whales-can-imitate-human-speech-research-reveals
======
sethbannon
Listening to these remarkable recordings, I can't help but think that as time
goes on, more and more of the artificial mental barriers we've built between
us and non-human animals will fall. I hope with more research humanity stops
seeing non-human animals as resources to be exploited but rather as sentient
beings to be respected.

~~~
noobermin
I think we need to draw a line somewhere. Are plants not "resources to be
exploited?" How about the bacteria in our gut?

Ok, how about insects, say you don't even kill insects, what about if you
accidentally step on a worm on a rainy day? Should we create "insect free
zones" that keep bugs out (somehow) so that insects don't get needlessly
killed on sidewalks or roads?

What about rats? Rats and house mice carry harmful diseases, and arguably,
extermination is merely depriving these animals of their right to self-
determination (to getting food and shelter, in your adobe.) Of course, they
aren't mindful they are spreading illness and disease to you, but you're the
_more aware_ being who is in a power differential with them, and thus need to
realize your responsibility in the interaction.

We can keep going down this rabbit hole. Someone already suggested not killing
lobsters. Do they have significantly larger brains than mice or rats? It
sounds like the answer is no[0]. In fact, their brains are the size of
grasshoppers'...which means if we help respect the sentience of lobsters we
probably have to respect the sentience of insects in general.

I consider myself a socialist, but some people are taking the "exploitation"
talk of Marx too far and applying it to animals who are not sentient. I can
understand drawing a line at Orcas, Dolphins, may be some primates or
elephants, etc. But not all animals are the same and to treat them as sentient
beings requires a large ignorance of reality of differences between the
species.

[0]
[http://www.gma.org/lobsters/trivia.html](http://www.gma.org/lobsters/trivia.html)

~~~
sethbannon
Yes, we do need to draw the line somewhere. I'm glad you agree. I'm also glad
you agree that we shouldn't cause suffering to Orcas, Dolphins, primates, or
elephants. Why do you think we should not cause suffering to those non-human
animals but think that it's ok to cause suffering to other non-human animals?

My line in the sand is sentience (the ability to suffer). What's yours?

~~~
noobermin
Ok I don't think I saw that explicitly in your post; it seemed like you
implied all non-human animals should be considered sentient. Anyway, the
ability to suffer honestly is a little difficult for me because I don't know
what definition of suffering could be defined in the first place. As humans,
we are the same species, so we can empathize with each others' suffering as we
can communicate with each other. Not all animals can communicate with us, so
we can't know whether they suffer or what that means.

From a mere "observation" stand point along the lines "behaviorism," well
almost all animals including insects "suffer" and "feel pain" because they
react to violent stimuli. So, that means we probably can't from your line in
the sand hurt almost any mammal or insect. That seems a little extreme doesn't
lead to a very pleasant life for more aware species like you and your friends.
If you want to live like that, go ahead, but I don't think you have the right
to impose that on other humans, who would find living like that extremely
difficult.

I personally don't have definite line in the sand. I love rabbits (for I
raised rabbits when I was a kid) and most rodents and wouldn't want to see
them get hurt, but I used to have rat issues in my apartment, I had to kill
them otherwise I'd be constantly sick, and that would impact people who I love
and I need to be there for. I owe love to people I know before rodents. And
for humans I don't know, would I fight for children on the east side of my
city getting sick due to lead in the water? Yes, and before crying for the
suffering of rats, cows, chickens, etc.

~~~
sethbannon
A lot of what you're saying makes a lot of sense. It's certainly very
difficult to know if a non-human animal is suffering without them being able
to communicate it using language. We can know when another human is suffering
even if we don't speak their language because we can empathize with them, but
this is harder for non-human animals.

I think you might be conflating "pain" with "suffering". Pain is simply a
reaction to a negative stimuli. Pain response has been shown in plants and
insects, for instance. But I don't place any value on pain that doesn't lead
to a negative subjective experience. That's what I think is actually bad.
Suffering has not been shown in plants or insects.

But there has been a lot of research showing that many non-human mammalian
animals do suffer. Here's some research on chickens, for instance:
[https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-016-1064-4](https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-016-1064-4)

And I've found this to be a good resource for navigating the sentience debate:
[http://www.animal-ethics.org/sentience-section/](http://www.animal-
ethics.org/sentience-section/)

~~~
posterboy
Suffering can be rather intellectual. As far as empathy is literally
intellectual, insects likely don't share that, so their opinion isn't guiding.
Certainly, the purely physical empathy, i.e. emotions, fear of loss, fear of
fire, etc. via mirror neurons are bounded by a few instincts and always
illuminating fear for ourselves. Will it kill me? kill it with fire! Could the
fire spread and kill me? Then maybe it's not such a good idea. Was that _my_
dog run over by a car? I should have taken better care. Will aliens simply
extinguish us without prior warning and so, should we try to get ahead of them
in the same way? Wouldn't that just expose us? It's a 50:50 chance either way.
The default is to do nothing unless stimulated to. After that, combat involves
communicating intent, a lot.

Likewise, the ability to communicate doesn't imply a need to. Conversely, the
ability to communicate doesn't define consciousness. Precisely, the ability to
refrain from communication is likewise important. So if an animal can't even
shut the fuck up, that's where I draw a line. And I should take that into
consideration more often when posting online. Further, action can be
involuntary communication. So "A lot can be inferred from how enemies are
treated". Concerning invasive surgery, the practical need for analgesics is a
smooth procedure, not the suffering of the patient.

Corollary: If something cannot rationalize it's suffering that's another line
in the sand. E.g. children vs a society of fish missing a sibling.

------
blondie9x
Whales are intelligent. They should not be killed by humans who mask the
activities as scientific research.

Japan is a great country and a leader on many levels. I speak Japanese. I
enjoy Japanese food and culture. The people are very kind and considerate.
There are some who are concerned if you stop killing whales you must stop
killing fish and other forms of sustenance. This is not the case. The
difference is whales are not sustenance and are not something most Japanese
would eat or enjoy to eat. Therefore to stop killing whales does not mean we
must stop killing the fish we eat to survive.

Cultures evolve and more forward. Japan should move forward and stop killing
whales.

Japanese people should not allow tax payer money to finance a new whaling
ship. There are more important programs that are much more needed. The
subsidies for whaling should end.
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/japan-
to...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/japan-to-replace-
whaling-mother-ship-in-sign-hunts-will-go-on)

~~~
kajecounterhack
>The difference is whales are not sustenance and are not something most
Japanese would eat or enjoy to eat.

Wow this is presumptuous, whale meat has a long history in Japan and whales
have been used for sustenance for a long time. That they should not be
sustenance is your opinion.

Pigs are intelligent too. Unfortunately eating animals in general is fraught
with moral quandary. Please stop making blanket statements about other
peoples' cultures.

~~~
nxsynonym
Intelligence aside, I see a difference between actively depleting a population
and farming animals as a resource.

~~~
kajecounterhack
I'd have been ok with the parent post if it was about that, or if it was just
stating an opinion and fairly treated the moral dilemma of eating intelligent
meat. Instead it was like "I'm clearly not Japanese but I fancy its culture
and its good good people don't want to eat whale meat" yeah, no.

------
gadders
Seals can do this too [1]. Worth clicking on the link to hear the strong New
England accent that Hoover the Seal had.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_(seal)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_\(seal\))

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
I YouTubed this. The speech is surprisingly clear and sounds human.

~~~
gadders
He was a pretty good mimic. I just watched
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfqiEGYEQoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfqiEGYEQoQ)
and you have to watch the seal to make sure that is him talking and not the
crowd.

~~~
knownothing
Interesting. If I was a sailor hundreds of years ago and witnessed something
like that I might think it was a merman.

------
wizardforhire
(Devils advocate here disclaimer) but imagine you're an isolated island with
no large mammal population and pick a date long ago. Food is scarce and the
ocean is large and these huge things are ripe but difficult for the taking.
One is enough to feed a village for the better part of year... And when you
eat it, it tastes like steak! A food you've never even contemplated existing!
Add to that a rich cultural tradition that resists change and encourages
strong dogmatic adherence that persists through the ages and is only bolstered
through geographic isolation... And yeah I can see the Japanese's strong
dedication to whale meat. Doesn't mean I like whaleing in the least or even
agree with it but I can understand to some degree the difficulty of change and
it must change. I also don't agree with these attempts at whale farming in
Oklahoma. Whales are intelligent empathetic creatures who can most definitely
feel pain and a whole host of other complex emotions. Only the most dense of
us humans could advocate for their continued use as a food source.

~~~
koverda
I haven't heard about whale farming in Oklahoma. Where can I find out more
about it?

------
realPubkey
It sounds more like humans pronouncing words in a way that killer-whales can
reproduce.

~~~
k_
True enough. I still find it impressive, though.

------
dctoedt
On a lighter note, @marklemley says: "If the orca says 'thanks for all the
fish' I'm going into full apocalypse survival mode."

[https://twitter.com/marklemley/status/958756421952155648](https://twitter.com/marklemley/status/958756421952155648)

------
sorokod
Parrots can do this too.

~~~
dinospaceship
ha.

------
emmelaich
From 1964 - The Girl who Spoke to Dolphins.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnVAv77gEqo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnVAv77gEqo)

You can hear an attempt by the dolphin to mimic. Very unclear though. Perhaps
the whole doco has better examples.

------
mitchtbaum
How would we type their speech patterns vs ours? Different frequency ranges?
Speed? Cadence? ...

Here is the only bit I can remember from cross-human language comparison, not
cross-species:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_tempo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_tempo)
(searched: different languages speaking rate) (Edit: information density and
speech rate)

So my first question is about types of "spoken languages"?

\---

from searching, "types of languages" "click languages":

* African languages and linguistic typology - [https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcgood/jcgood-AfricaTypology.p...](https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcgood/jcgood-AfricaTypology.pdf)

* Language Classification: History and Method - [https://edisciplinas.usp.br/mod/resource/view.php?id=2225588](https://edisciplinas.usp.br/mod/resource/view.php?id=2225588)

Anyone have a speech-to-text and POS-tagger yet for dolphins' language
morphology/-ies?

\---

Deciphering the Dolphin Language -
[http://neuronresearch.net/dolphin/pdf/Dolphin_language.pdf](http://neuronresearch.net/dolphin/pdf/Dolphin_language.pdf)

An assumption can be made that the CNS of the dolphin employs a frame time
similar to humans, nominally 30 milliseconds. As a starting point, it is
reasonable to assume that a typical phoneme is three to five times longer than
30 ms based on experience with human languages. A complication arises because
of the multiple sources of sound within the dolphin’s nasal passages,
recalling that the larynx of the dolphin is not in its throat (the passage
along which food is ingested). These multiple acoustic sources suggest the
dolphin can achieve an equivalent of the unique “throat singing” of the Inuit
and Tuva people of Asia. Throat singing is also known as overtone singing.
Wikipedia provides a good description of throat singing. In Dolphin, the
equivalent is clearly nasal singing. Nasal singing in dolphin may be even more
extensive.

As a starting point, the acoustic range of dolphin sounds (other than its
forward focused echolocation sounds) potentially useful in communications
(language) extends from about 2000 Hz to at least 80,000 Hz (with whistles
extending up to about 40,000 Hz). In seeking to understand Dolphinia or
Truncates, it makes no sense to restrict our analyses to frequencies that the
human can hear. Nor is it rational to limit the dolphin’s language to either a
tonal or a stressed structure.

\---

Interpreting the acoustic pulse emissions of a wild bottlenose dolphin -
[http://aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueAr...](http://aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueArchives/1988/Aquatic_Mammals_14_1/Goodson.pdf)

The study of acoustic signals and the supposed spoken language of the dolphins
-
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240572231...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177)

I hope some researcher(s) will put out organized videos of dolphins chatting
alongside audio spectrograms. Remember the Enigma story, every message had
certain words in it and was likely to have certain ones in certain places at
certain times from certain senders to certain receivers... Certainly.

~~~
cetalingua
The role of larynx in cetacean sound production is still debated, but we do
know that they posses at least 2 sound generating mechanisms that could work
independently and simultaneously. It appears that right side phonic lip is
involved in echolocation and pulsed sounds, the right one is involved in
whistling. Two (maybe even 3, if larynx is indeed invoved too) sound producing
mechanisms make their communication even more complex, since it greatly
increases the sound combinations probabilities.

Many researchers have already done that, i.e. using video and audio for sound
analysis, and here we are,60+ years later, still do not know the function of
even a single call, apart, of course, from signature whistles and
echolocation. This is a non-human communication system, 25 mln years in the
making by creatures who rely on sounds in ways humans never will.

When we study cetaceans, we struggle to determine who produces the sound, who
responds, even tagged animals are problematic, because the sound could be made
by someone next to them. In large pelagic pods, it is a cacophony, they chat
all the time and never shut up. It appears that at least in dolphins, whistles
could be more of a long distance signals, but pulsed ones, like burst pulses,
are more of a short distance signals, for those who are close by.

But make no mistake, some information is being transmitted, we know that. The
Bastian experiment with all its flaws was first to demonstrate it,and it has
been replicated too. Some researchers are not entirely convinced, but it is
definitely a very interesting area to explore.

~~~
mitchtbaum
> the function of even a single call, apart, of course, from signature
> whistles and echolocation

Denise Herzing id'd seaweed, right?

Perhaps there are other ones easy to identify through existing sub-sea-level
candid camera videos: hey, there's a [food they eat], let's go over there;
help / danger, there's a [thing they fear]; I forgot my [phone / wallet /
keys] in my other pair of pants, brb...

> we struggle to determine who produces the sound

What about based on signature whistles for addressing one another? It looks
like there's a good amount of info on how they use it, so that could help,
right?

> it is a cacophony

What about looking for only "vocal copy" instances between individuals to use
as markers?

~~~
cetalingua
Denise Herzing used synthetic whistles trying to label things in our human
way, pretty much the extension of Herman's line of thought. But we do not know
if dolphins indeed label things in their natural communication system.

Signature whistles are tricky, and not everyone agrees that they are actually
a thing. There was a recent study done in Israel where dolphins appeared to be
using signature whistles of dolphins who died some time ago. It could mean
that either signature whistles are not what we think they are, or that
dolphins have routine conversations about their dead companions.

~~~
mitchtbaum
> synthetic whistles trying to label things

Oh, that's not very helpful..

> we do not know if dolphins indeed label things in their natural
> communication system

I believe we'd need to start with that as a basic assumption for how language
works to begin with. How does that assumption seem to you?

> dolphins appeared to be using signature whistles of dolphins who died some
> time ago

I guess they probably talk about loved ones even when they're not in the same
"room", same as us.

> Signature whistles are tricky

"Signature whistle" seems like an awfully complicated way to say "name".

------
futileboy
"Alexa, order more tuna."

------
throwawazqq
Imagine the combination of Orcas and/or other animals with artificial
intelligence /cloud hookups, same as for humans. Certainly will be an
interesting world...

------
kpU8efre7r
Can't wait to see a whale talk to me at the local zoo.

------
SkittlesNTwix
Completely misread this title first as, "Orcs can..."

~~~
farnsworthy
Same. But they can, too. Be careful.

~~~
SurrealSoul
I dunno, you know what they call orcs with two brain cells

Pregnant

------
ourmandave
"Candygram..."

~~~
joejerryronnie
"I'm only a dolphin, ma'am"

------
pfortuny
well, so do parrots and we are not surprised...

~~~
sp332
This is really, really unusual for mammals.

~~~
gr3yh47
some dogs have done this

~~~
golem14
Bello the talking dog:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ2oX3M8gv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ2oX3M8gv4)

<sorry, in German>

