Not surprising!
"After about four years, NOC’s speech-like behavior subsided."
If you tried to talk to someone for 4 years and they ignored you, wouldn't you give up too?
That's worse than BT's customer service team!!
WHITE WHALE spent 4 years trying to tell us something, then stopped
A young Beluga whale spent four years apparently trying to speak English recently, according to scientists in California. The cetacean's enunciation was apparently clear enough that it was actually discovered when the creature ordered a startled diver to get out of the water. “The whale’s vocalizations often sounded as if …
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 13:00 GMT Gordon Pryra
Best get those scientists out there to do their research
I'm guessing their research can be based around "does a sentient animal taste nicer than the normal higher intelligence species we routinely massacre"
Then they can go on to think about the secondary points raised, ie in a truly civilized world, would eating wales not be classed as cannibalism.
Then again we have the luxury of some religious people who talk for God giving us the get out clause that "sod it, god them then to us to do WTF we want with"
All the above aside, we humans have known for generations that the larger water mammals talk, are sentient and the travesty of the genocide being committed against them should be seen under crimes against humanity (if you class human as a thinking being who has a sense of self)
One who parrots humans is just another pointer to the evils we do in the name of religion, pet foods and cosmetics (sorry scientific research)
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 13:12 GMT Neil 51
Re: Best get those scientists out there to do their research
As much as I like blaming religion for everything as well, I think in this case religions (particularly eastern ones) have done more to make people turn vegetarian rather than make people who would otherwise be herbivores chow down on a burger.
Humans are naturally omnivores so it takes something external (ethics, empathy, philosophy, religion, being a hippy etc.) to turn them veggie.
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 13:20 GMT Dave 126
Re: Best get those scientists out there to do their research
I think human's relationships with whales have been steadily improving over the decades, due in part to our better understanding of them... your no-doubt heart-felt criticism of our species comes across as denying these improvements.
It is only be increasing our understanding of whales that we can seek to minimise our impact on them. Only last week I heard a marine biologist on the radio observe how humpback whales seek a minimum distance from each other when resting... suggesting that human craft should avoid encroaching on the creature's 'personal space' as well. It is likely that many creatures are more threatened by our accidental impact on their environments than by our direct hunting of them.... Whilst Douglas Adams is being mentioned on this thread, may I suggest "Last Chance to See", in which he outlined in the eighties the plight of a river dolphin (now extinct, I believe) because it couldn't hear past the noise of outboard motors?
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 13:33 GMT Bear Features
Re: Best get those scientists out there to do their research
What are you waffling on about? .... We minimise our impact on whales by... guess what, leaving them alone. And that includes direct and indirect. We need to look at our own species and wake up to the fact that if we carry on the way we're doing, we'll not be here very long. We've only been here "five minutes" and look at what we have destroyed, including ourselves.
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 13:29 GMT Elmer Phud
Re: Best get those scientists out there to do their research
"Nice as it is hear you bitter anti-religious zealotry (or not), what does that have to do with the topic?
You wouldn't like it if I used a discussion on the new x86 chips to strong-arm in a gospel presentation, I'd wager.
"
We get fries with whales?
gospel & wager?
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Wednesday 24th October 2012 10:09 GMT TeeCee
Re: @TeeCee
Whales. A bit steak-like, but not a patch on actual steak. You could live on it, but you wouldn't really want to.
Given the choice of the two, steak-wise, the cow would get it every time for me, as that's the one that tastes best and doesn't require any tedious mucking around with ships and harpoon guns as a bonus.
Unfortunately they did not have scientist on the menu in Reykjavik, but I strongly suspect it would be preferable to whale.
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 13:38 GMT NomNomNom
The problem is that society doesn't take major allegations against popular entertainers seriously when they're made by Beluga whales. The whale eventually figured "no-ones listening and he's dead now anyway, so I might as well stop warning them".
A parliamentary investigation due to start to find out just why the scientists at the National Marine Mammal Foundation didn't act on the allegations. Jimmy's dead but perhaps we can still blame someone.
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 18:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
This isn't going to be a popular post but...
Since it's legally impossible to defame a dead person in the UK, I am beginning to wonder if Savile's crimes were really as widespread as is being made out.
News Corp and Trinity Mirror seem to be having a whale (*cough*) of a time sticking the boot into the BBC. I imagine they feel the Beeb deserves it after their holier-than-thou attitude during the phone hacking scandal.
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Wednesday 24th October 2012 11:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Since it's legally impossible to defame a dead person in the UK"
This doesn't mean nothing can be done.
eg. his family could start calling the accusers liars -- then the accusers would have to take them to court for defamation and would have to prove their allegations to prove they aren't liars.
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 15:31 GMT ArmanX
Re: Speech?
Actually, it sounds like someone yelling through a megaphone; he's really just trying to tell everyone that this is the line for prepurchased tickets, and that the line for swim-ins is on the other side of the reef, but if you want to get an autograph from Flipper, you'll need to get in the line over there...
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 13:34 GMT Gordon Pryra
Whats it got to do with the topic?
Not sure, does the content need to relate to the topic?
The post is about a talking whale, which is so obviously the next coming, just the bloke upstairs forgot to which of the races he gave the opposable thumbs, therefore sending his prophet to the worst place possible.
Which brings us back full circle to the anti-religious zealotry or more correctly, the stupidity of both believing in any religion and, secondly, pretending to believe that people are performing any form of scientific research by farming sentient creatures for lipstick
I rest my case
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 13:43 GMT Leona A
According to the BBC, the whale said...
'Get Out'
which I think was a clear direction :)
Amazing animals, watched a programme on them on the BBC a while back, which shows that far from being afraid of us they actually seek 'us' out now, apparently to learn more about us, they also showed how they formed a group to round up and hunt fish, just amazing, they are more intelligent than they are credited for.
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 14:32 GMT some vaguely opinionated bloke
Re: According to the BBC, the whale said...
"far from being afraid of us they actually seek 'us' out now, apparently to learn more about us"
Though their scientific advances in the understanding of humans is somewhat tempered by the unfortunate situation of being published in peer-reviewed journals that then fall apart when read by other whales, what with them being all soggy and stuff.
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Wednesday 24th October 2012 10:18 GMT TeeCee
Re: According to the BBC, the whale said...
they also showed how they formed a group to round up and hunt fish
Tuna do that. They circle around mob-handed to force a shoal of small fish into an ever smaller area to form a "baitball" and then individually detach themselves from the corralling pack to pass through the ball and stuff themselves on the high-density banquet. That doesn't require intelligence, just umpty-hundred thousand years of evolving the best instincts for survival.
A pack of Tuna is more effective at catching large quantities of fish than a trawl net.
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Tuesday 23rd October 2012 14:23 GMT tkioz
My best is the first four years went something like "hey dude, hey dude, how about letting me out of this place, or at least bringing in a few chicks"... then since he stopped speaking English at that point it seems reasonable he gave up and embraced the time honoured tradition of swearing his head off while smiling and nodding...
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Monday 29th October 2012 15:44 GMT buyone
Can't see the wood for the trees !
The salient facts (as presented) are :
1)A mammal attempts communication with other mammals.
2)The other mammals are very excited by this.
3)Communication attempts continue for four years. (Perhaps they are a bit thick?)
4)The other mammals do not return the communication attempt. (They are.)
5)The mammal scientist reports via the Seven Seas Sonar net (sss.) that there is no intelligent life on the earth above the waves.
Are homo sapiens so incurious that they didn't wonder what the message was?
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
