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Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumThe Begula whale that tried to talk human to his Navy captors
While captive in a Navy program, a beluga whale named Noc began to mimic human speech. What was behind his attempt to talk to us?Millions of years before we humans came along, the earths oceans were a vast, unbroken web of whale song. The complex courting arias of humpbacks, the distinct clicking dialects of migrating sperm-whale clans, the congalike poundings of Pacific grays, the multi-thousand-mile moans and blips of massive blue and fin whales conversing across oceans at octaves well below our range of hearing, the nearly nonstop Arctic chatter of belugas: All of them are being drowned out now by our clamor.
And yet a single beluga managed to make his voice go global again, and in the only medium left him: the worldwide web. The extraordinary history of Noc (pronounced no-see) resurrects a captive who somehow has found a way to speak to us, both literally and figuratively, of the true nature of his kind.
Since the early 1960s the United States had been deploying marine mammals, beginning with dolphins, for tasks including mine detection and recovery of test torpedoes. By the mid-1970s, the locus of the naval cold war had shifted to the Arctic, where the latest Soviet submarines were secreting themselves under the ice cap, an environment off-limits to animals including dolphins and sea lions used in the Navy Marine Mammal Program (NMMP). Experiments commenced on weaponry that could function in such extreme conditions. The Navy needed marine mammals with built-in sonar, capable of locating and retrieving sunken experimental torpedoes in the frigid waters and low visibility of the Arctic.
In August 1977, with Canadian government consent, Sam Ridgway, a Texas-born veterinarian and a co-founder of NMMP, dispatched a team to the northern coast of Manitoba. There, the Navy would procure the first belugas for a new Arctic initiative, known as Cold Ops. Belugas typically travel in pods of approximately 25 whales, led by a dominant male but bound by close ties between mothers and their calves. Newborns nurse for about two years and, living within a multitiered matriarchal society very similar to that of elephants, are also raised by an extended group of females................
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/story-one-whale-who-tried-bridge-linguistic-divide-between-animals-humans-180951437/?no-ist
Its a long tale AND IT EVEN HAS THE RECORDINGS of the whale speaking which you can listen to.
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The Begula whale that tried to talk human to his Navy captors (Original Post)
Ichingcarpenter
Jun 2014
OP
Absolutely. What a shame. Heartless exploitation, stealing their worlds from them.
Judi Lynn
Jun 2014
#10
hlthe2b
(101,730 posts)1. bookmarked for later. Sounds amazing!
crim son
(27,462 posts)2. This is just amazing!
Thanks for posting, so cool.
pnwest
(3,265 posts)3. Very interesting article. Link to audio was
broken, if course... But interesting read. Thanks!
bananas
(27,509 posts)8. Try the audio at the soundcloud website
pnwest
(3,265 posts)11. Yeek!! That was eerie! Thanks for the link, tho.
Loki
(3,825 posts)4. What an interesting read.
Thanks for posting.
Orrex
(63,086 posts)5. Whales aren't actually all that smart
If they were, they'd know better than to try to associate with us.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)6. I found that an incredibly sad story.
Those poor creatures just wanted to go home...and be with their family...and I am sure that is why Noc was trying to communicate with us.
But man can be inhumane to man, and he can also be cruel to a baloga whale.
proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)7. OTOH, #belugagrads
Katie Smith @rezkatie · 22h
Had a great time seeing @Raffi_RC! My last concert was 20 years ago! Almost cried a few times! #nostalgia #belugagrads
Had a great time seeing @Raffi_RC! My last concert was 20 years ago! Almost cried a few times! #nostalgia #belugagrads
[center][/center]
[center][/center]
http://www.childhonouring.org/belugagradsnetwork.html
http://www.childhonouring.org/lightwebdarkwebbook.html
Judi Lynn
(160,219 posts)10. Absolutely. What a shame. Heartless exploitation, stealing their worlds from them.
Giving them nothing, actually, in return, but loneliness, and early deaths.
Very, very sad.
This article tells us, also they are completely aware the Navy noise is killing whales. They are continuing to do it, regardless when we also know it can be done without harming the sentient sea animals.
ThoughtCriminal
(14,011 posts)9. Dory speaks whale