Scientists from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have taught seals how to sing.
We already know that there are some species that can do a fairly reasonable job of impersonating humans. Heck, there are even some politicians making a gammon fisted go of it too.
The study group have said that though their vocalizations are much less varied than ours, the vocal tracts of gray seals closely resembles that of humans.
“The seals underwent hundreds of training sessions, first learning to copy sequences of sounds that matched the frequency of their own moaning calls. Once they mastered these, they were taught to copy formants, or frequency bands. In humans, formants create vowel sounds, encoding important information necessary for speech.”
Three seals were trained as part of this study: Zola, Janice, and Gandalf.
Zola was able to replicate tunes, or sequences of frequency changes. Janice and Gandolf were tested on human vowel sounds, and could reliably mimic these by the end of testing.
Read the full findings report here.
