Oh my god:
US musician and writer David Rothenberg has recorded a whale's response to the sound of his clarinet - and says that sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.
You can listen to a recording at BBC News. It amazing and eerie and beautiful.
I've always figured that there's no way we're ever gonna be able to figure out how to talk to any extraterrestrials we may encounter if we can't figure out to communication with whales, elephants, and maybe dolphins, too. I mean, we're so closely related to these creatures -- certainly infinitely more so than we will be to any ETs -- and if we can't even talk to them, with whom we have so much in common, relatively speaking, surely the chasm between us and aliens will be unbridgable.
I sometimes think that, because we've had to stop using tool-usage as a way to divide us humans from "the animals," one other clearer dividing line -- because obviously there is something that distinguishes homo sapiens from other animals -- may be that we make art, that we tell one another stories. And then, as a corollary, I sometimes imagine that whalesong is actually whales telling stories to one another... and that, when we discover that, instead of attempting to move that bright line again, we'll finally give in and acknowledge that whales are "people" too. (Is "elephant art" art? I don't know... but I know it like it.)
duet link via Americablog
(Technorati tags: whalesong, interspecies communication)
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