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Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

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Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#31

Post by Bost »

karmakaze wrote: post #21
unsupp0rted wrote: post #2

I’m missing how this is groundbreaking or even a “conversation”. They played audio recordings of other whales to the whale and it replied the way whales reply to one another. The scientists didn’t know what they were saying, other than since the target whale appeared to stick around it probably wasn’t completely gibberish.

Whether this is groundbreaking or not depends on what the whale thought of it. If it got the notion that humans are now actually trying to talk to it in its language, I'd call that a win.

> If it got the notion

To me, it seems like precisely this part got lost in translation

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#32

Post by JoBrad »

JohnMakin wrote: post #22

Good lord this article and others about it are terrible, here is the source text everything seems to be drawing from: https://peerj.com/articles/16349/

> Here we report on a rare and opportunistic acoustic turn-taking with an adult female humpback whale, known as Twain, in Southeast Alaska. Post hoc acoustic and statistical analyses of a 20-min acoustic exchange between the broadcast of a recorded contact call, known as a ‘whup/throp’, with call responses by Twain revealed an intentional human-whale acoustic (and behavioral) interaction.

Re-wording this in less-technical language, and including excerpts from the lead researchers didn’t make the article less informative, in my opinion.

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#33

Post by burnished »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #8

Sometimes I play random YouTube budgie sounds to my real budgies who promptly respond in a similar way. This sounds like the same except the animal is longer than 4 inches long?

Probably worth pointing out that the budgie thing is also an interesting and noteworthy example, if you're trying to suggest this is commonplace you should reconsider

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#34

Post by bboygravity »

smt88 wrote: post #11
JohnMakin wrote: post #5

how is this different than me meowing at my cat and her meowing back? a “conversation” didn’t happen. Also, the scientific community is very resistant to the idea of categorizing any non-human communication as “language” (language is pretty much defined as being done only by humans) despite many cetaceans clearly showing signs of having this ability.

I read the article and can't come up with a way it is any different from you meowing back and forth with a cat. This experiment teaches us basically nothing and has no bearing on talking to extraterrestrials. I can't believe it was written up this way.

This experiment? You didn't read the paper about the experiment.

Blame the crappy article, not the science, experiment or paper.

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#35

Post by rokkitmensch »

debo_ wrote: post #18
acheron wrote: post #12

One step closer to Seaquest DSV.

Which was one step derived from the dolphin in Johnny Mneumonic!

Johnny Pneumonic, the little-known Kafka-esque Gibson follow up in which a data courier's internal systems get a virus and he lives out his life in suffering, fully convinced that he himself is an embodiment of poor software/hardware implementations; a "bug", if you will.

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#37

Post by bamboozled »

lp4vn wrote: post #28

"In the past the whales had been able to sing to each other across whole oceans, even from one ocean to another because sound travels such huge distances underwater. But now, again because of the way in which sound travels, there is no part of the ocean that is not constantly jangling with the hubbub of ships’ motors, through which it is now virtually impossible for the whales to hear each other’s songs or messages.…

Economic progress trumps all, even magical whale songs that span whole worlds.

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#38

Post by heads »

fsckboy wrote: post #29

I wonder where this whale Twain got its name? assuming the whale-namers named a bunch of whales (at once or over time) it's really appropriate that this particular whale participated in this particular landmark conversation. One of the most popular, distinctly-American authors of all time, humorist Samuel Clemens, wrote under the pen-name "Mark Twain". He was very skilled in his use of language for communicating his…

Thank you for writing that up. Connecting knowledge through words and wordplay is a real treat.

Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale

#40

Post by [deleted] »

lp4vn wrote: post #28

"In the past the whales had been able to sing to each other across whole oceans, even from one ocean to another because sound travels such huge distances underwater. But now, again because of the way in which sound travels, there is no part of the ocean that is not constantly jangling with the hubbub of ships’ motors, through which it is now virtually impossible for the whales to hear each other’s songs or messages.…

[deleted]
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