A team of scientists from the SETI Institute, University of California Davis and the Alaska Whale Foundation, had a close encounter with a non-human (aquatic) intelligence. The Whale-SETI team has been studying humpback whale communication systems in an effort to develop intelligence filters for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

In response to a recorded humpback “contact” call played into the sea via an underwater speaker, a humpback whale named Twain approached and circled the team’s boat while responding in a conversational style to the whale’s “greeting signal.” During the 20-minute exchange, Twain responded to each playback call and matched the interval variations between each signal.

We believe this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback ‘language’.