A video showing an orca appearing to mimic human speech is leaving viewers both fascinated, and seriously unsettled.

Killer whales, also known as orcas, are already known as some of the most intelligent animals in the ocean. They are both fascinating, incredibly smart, and beautiful animals. As the largest members of the dolphin family and apex predators, their cognitive abilities have long intrigued scientists. But their potential to imitate human-like sounds is now drawing fresh attention.

Killer whales sounds

The discovery dates back to a 2018 study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, led by researchers from Germany, Spain, the UK, and Chile, according to VT. The team set out to explore just how flexible orcas are when it comes to copying unfamiliar sounds.

“We wanted to see how flexible a killer whale can be in copying sounds,” Josep Call, professor in evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St Andrews and co-author of the study, told The Guardian, according to VT.

“We thought what would be really convincing is to present them with something that is not in their repertoire – and in this case ‘hello’ [is] not what a killer whale would say,” he added.

To test this, researchers worked with Wikie, a 14-year-old female orca living in an aquarium in France. She was first trained to copy sounds made by her three-year-old calf, before being challenged with entirely unfamiliar noises.

Wikie was exposed to a mix of orca and human sounds, including the words “hello,” “Amy,” “ah ha,” “one, two,” and “bye-bye.”

“This is as terrifying as it is hilarious”

The results surprised even the researchers. Wikie was able to quickly reproduce the sounds, successfully mimicking two of them on her very first attempt. Recordings of her attempts have since circulated on social media, sparking a wave of reactions.

“This is as terrifying as it is hilarious,” one user wrote, according to VT.

“Ok, that second hello was a little demonic. Was that really an orca, or the Devil speaking through a ghost box LOL The funniest and scariest thing EVER!” another joked.

“Now I’m scared,” a third added, while a fourth commented: “OK that’s the creepiest f’ing thing I’ve ever heard.”

Call said the study provides the first evidence that orcas may be capable of vocal imitation.

“I think here we have the first evidence that killer whales may be learning sounds by vocal imitation, and this is something that could be the basis of the dialects we observe in the wild – it is plausible,” he explained, according to VT.

“Even though the morphology [of orcas] is so different, they can still produce a sound that comes close to what another species, in this case, us, can produce,” he added.

You can listen to the audio here: