Abstract

In a landmark experiment, a team of scientists from UC Davis, the Alaska Whale Foundation, and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) conducted a 20-minute conversation with a humpback whale named Twain in its own language. During the experiment, they played what is called a communication call similar to the human greeting that whales use to call other whales or to let each other know where they are. Scientists emitted the same contact call 36 different times at varying intervals, and Twain responded to the call each time, even closely matching the intervals. This type of matching suggests that Twain was engaged in a deliberate exchange. This has something to do with talking to aliens, since there is an important assumption that aliens would be interested in making contact and then target human receivers, somewhat similar to how Twain responded to the call for contact from scientists. The research has been published in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ.

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