No animal would rather be in captivity than the wild, but rarely do they speak out. A recently released study reveals that a beluga whale named NOC was able to mimic the human voice spontaneously, even crying, "Out."
NOC died in 2007, after living to the age of 30. Apparently, the whale had starting making human-like noises after seven years in captivity, but the study titled "Spontaneous human speech mimicry by a cetacean" was only recently published.
NOC was being held at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in California, and apparently fooled a diver into thinking somebody was telling him to get out. After surfacing, the diver inquired who had asked him to get out. Turns out it was NOC, who had repeated a phrase similar to "out" several times while the diver was underwater. According to ABC15, the diver believed that NOC was asking to be set free.
"You could hear there was a conversation, but you couldn't make out what they were saying," said study author Sam Ridgeway from the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program to National Geographic.
These vocalizations sounded far more human than whale. They were in a lower octave, occurred in three-second bursts (like humans), and seemed to contain harmonies more like humans rather than whales.
Once the scientists figured out that NOC had a knack, they began rewarding the whale for producing the sounds on command, and even had a pressure transducer inserted into the whale's nasal cavity so that they could understand what exactly was going on physiologically.
"Our observations suggest that the whale had to modify its vocal mechanics in order to make the speech-like sounds," said Ridgeway. "The sounds we heard were clearly an example of vocal learning by the white whale."
Watch NOC below: