{"id":14387,"date":"2026-04-10T13:34:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T13:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/?p=14387"},"modified":"2026-04-10T13:35:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T13:35:24","slug":"this-might-be-the-creepiest-thing-youll-hear-today-%f0%9f%98%b3%f0%9f%91%87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/?p=14387","title":{"rendered":"This might be the creepiest thing you\u2019ll hear today\u2026 \ud83d\ude33\ud83d\udc47"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Orca,
Credit: Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

A video showing an orca appearing to mimic human speech is leaving viewers both fascinated, and seriously unsettled.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Killer whales sounds<\/h2>\n

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\u00a0VT.<\/a>\u00a0The team set out to explore just how flexible orcas are when it comes to copying unfamiliar sounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to see how flexible a killer whale can be in copying sounds,\u201d 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\u00a0VT.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cWe thought what would be really convincing is to present them with something that is not in their repertoire \u2013 and in this case \u2018hello\u2019 [is] not what a killer whale would say,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Wikie was exposed to a mix of orca and human sounds, including the words \u201chello,\u201d \u201cAmy,\u201d \u201cah ha,\u201d \u201cone, two,\u201d and \u201cbye-bye.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is as terrifying as it is hilarious\u201d<\/h2>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is as terrifying as it is hilarious,\u201d one user wrote, according to VT.<\/p>\n

\u201cOk, 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!\u201d another joked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I\u2019m scared,\u201d a third added, while a fourth commented: \u201cOK that\u2019s the creepiest f\u2019ing thing I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Call said the study provides the first evidence that orcas may be capable of vocal imitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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 \u2013 it is plausible,\u201d he explained, according to VT.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven 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,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

You can listen to the audio here:<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Listen<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit: Shutterstock 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… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14389,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387\/revisions\/14389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}