Would Love To Talk To A Whale - Blog Posts

Stop everything. We literally have whale language. We just discovered definitive whale language. We can't translate it (yet) but we literally deciphered that whale calls are not random, and they're not simple. They follow linguistic patterns just like us. They have names for each other.

We're on the brink of ACTUALLY understanding what an animal is talking about, beyond basic warning cries. My childhood dream of being able to talk to animals is like, 1 step away from happening.

And omg if we ever do get to talk to whales, my adhd ass has a MILLION questions. Do they see/use the stars and moon to navigate? Do they have religion? Can they understand other whale species, or is it like trying to talk to a chimp? Do they like people-watching while we're on our boats whale-watching? Do they teach their offspring the way humans and apes do? What's the most annoying animal in the sea?

I want to tell them about us and our relationship to whales. How we have movies about them. We see their jaws in museums and marvel at how big they are. We try to save them when they wash up on the beach. How we made such a big push to outlaw whale hunting and bring back the whale population. How much I hated the novel Moby Dick.

I wonder if they would have questions for us? They can't really fathom the land the way we can understand the ocean. They might be able to see shorelines, maybe some islands. But think of how much land stuff a whale has never seen. They've never seen a cat, or a desert. I wonder if they would know that there must be more land, or assume that it's all just concentrated around the shore.

I imagine they would be curious about our boats, and why we can't swim very well. If they have culture, which I strongly believe they and most intelligent animals do, they might even remember stories passed down about whale hunting. They might ask why we suck at singing. Why do our fins look weird? How would we explain walking to a sea creature?

Of course, that is the one wrinkle - in all linguistic research and animal communication research, we haven't yet discovered a species that also asks questions the way we do. Apes don't seem to care about where or why things happen. They just make the tools and move on. At this point we have no reason to believe that a whale would need or want to ask questions. They have the ocean, they have their food, and they don't even make tools the way we do.

But still... can you imagine really having a conversation with a whale? How amazing and humbling it would be.