Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
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Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
#2I’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.
Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
#3Does anyone have a link to the actual “conversation”? Is there a transcript?
Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
#4> an important assumption of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that extraterrestrials will be interested in making contact and so target human receivers. This important assumption is certainly supported by the behavior of humpback whales.
I realise they can only work with what they have but I'm not sure how much a whale's behaviour can tell us about extraterrestrial behavior any more than our own behaviour can. As mammals whales are relatively closely related to us and their social behaviours aren't dissimilar to our own.
Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
#5how 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.
Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
#6Does anyone have a link to the actual “conversation”? Is there a transcript?
The first part of the transcript was "Hoooow aaarrrreeee youuu dooooing? IIIIII'mmmm aaaaa sciiiientiiiist." :-p
Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
#7how 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.
Did your cat tell you its name?
Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
#8Sometimes 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?
Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
#9how 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.
It seems to be the "conversation" part, not necessarily "communication", one of the early stages in children's language acquisition is teaching the flow of back and forth responses and pausing for the other to speak: which seems to be what they're indicating in this article.
Re: Scientists have 20-minute "conversation" with a humpback whale
#10how 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.
It’s interesting for sure but ‘conversation’ seems like an oversell here. That implies some sort of exchange of information at the least which doesn’t seem like what happened?