- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
Scientists Have Reported a Breakthrough In Understanding Whale Language::Researchers have identified new elements of whale vocalizations that they propose are analogous to human speech, including vowels and pitch.
I mean, would animals necessarily make a distinction between humans and other types of predatory or dangerous animal, understand exactly what our impact on their habitat actually is (something like warming temperatures would be hard to associate with us if you didn’t know about human co2 emissions or the greenhouse effect, for instance), and understand that our technology is an extension of our control and not some other, strange symbiotic creature? Considering whales have no technology of their own and therefore probably very little understanding of the concept, they might not realize things like ships and fishing boats are entirely our doing and not some massive surface creature that eats all the fish, that land dwelling creatures like us live on top of like barnacles. And assuming they do understand what our ships are, they might hate or fear us from passed down stories of whalers, or encounters with those whaling ships that still exist, but would they think of us much differently than how they’d think of other predators to whales, like orcas?
They might think the boats have trapped us like they trap whales and fish, they probably want to team up against the menace