A team of SETI researchers communicated with a humpback whale in research that could help us decode outer space signals and communicate with aliens.

Whales Could Help Us Learn To Talk To Aliens: The SETI Institute, dedicated to searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life, has recently come up with a theory of making contact with aliens if they exist, which includes humpback whales. The fact that drew the team’s attention towards whales is that they are one of the most intelligent species on the planet and have an impressive way to communicate with each other. The team recently studied marine mammals’ communication systems to develop “intelligence filters” for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Research And Major Breakthrough

A team of researchers of SETI Institute collaborated with researchers from the University of California Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation and initiated their research on whales’ communication systems. During their research, the team communicated with humpback whales. The researchers placed an underwater speaker in the sea and played a recorded humpback “contact call” to which a humpback whale named Twain approached and circled their boats. Interestingly, the whale understood and responded to each playback call, matching the interval variations between each signal.

What Researchers Said?

As per Brenda McCowan of UC Davis, co-author of a study in the journal PeerJ, this may be the first time humans communicated with the humpback whales in a ‘language’. Notably, humpback whales are intelligent sea mammals and have a very complex social system. These whales make tools and communicate with songs and different types of calls.

According to Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute, a coauthor on the paper, as humans’ technology is not that advanced and we have limitations on it, aliens will be interested in making contact through human receivers.

“Because of current limitations on technology, 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 behaviour of humpback whales,” Indian Express quoted Laurance Doyle as saying.

Signals From Outer Space And Humpback Whales

The researchers are now studying the humpback communication systems and trying to decode it so that they can detect and interpret signals from outer space, if they exist. It is similar to how astronauts practice Moon missions in simulations on Earth. It is worth noting that these findings can be used to develop filters or codes that can be used on any message we get from extraterrestrials.

SETI recently simulated receiving a signal from Mars as part of its preparations for potential contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.