A team of scientists from the SETI Institute, UC Davis, and the Alaska Whaling Foundation got up close and personal with non-human (aquatic) intelligence. Whale-SETI studies the communication systems of humpback whales to develop intelligent filters to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

In response to a recorded humpback “contact” call played out to sea via an underwater speaker, a humpback whale named Twain approached and circled the team’s boat, responding conversationally to the whale’s “hello signal”. During the 20-minute exchange, Twain responded to each wiretap call and negotiated changes in the intervals between each signal.

A description and analysis of the encounter was published in a recent issue of PeerJ titled “Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and studying nonhuman intelligence: A ‘conversation’ with an Alaskan humpback whale.”

Lead author Dr. D., of the University of California at Berkeley. “We believe this is the first communicative exchange in humpback language between humans and humpback whales,” said Brenda McCowan. Davis.

Co-author Dr. of the Alaska Whaling Foundation. “Humpback whales are highly intelligent, have a complex social system, create tools such as bubble nets to catch fish, and actively communicate through both song and social calls,” said Fred Sharp.

“Due to the current limitations of technology, an important assumption in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that extraterrestrials will be interested in communicating and will therefore target human recipients. “This important assumption is clearly supported by the behavior of humpback whales,” said Dr. Laurance. Doyle, of the SETI Institute, co-authored the paper.

The Whale-SETI team is working on intelligent terrestrial, non-human communication systems to develop filters to apply to the extraterrestrial signals they receive, similar to studying Antarctica as a proxy for Mars. The mathematics of information theory will be used to measure communicative complexity (e.g., the structure of rules embedded in a received message). Source