Whale Chat

Scientists believe they recently had a conversation with a humpback whale off the Alaskan coast. Twain, the name the scientists gave to the humpback, circled the scientists’ boat for 20 minutes after they played a recording of a humpback’s greeting call. Twain briefly surfaced before diving back into the water and answering with her own call.

Scientists say that this whale chat is the first step to conversing with other non-human life, including . . . aliens?

The group of scientists learning to speak whale work for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). They claim that speaking whale is a good step to chatting with aliens, because whales possess considerable intelligence, social complexity, and range of vocalizations.

In a biblical worldview, we don’t expect alien life to exist because our planet was uniquely created to host life (Isaiah 45:18). So we’ll have to settle for trying to speak to whales, creatures that God equipped with their own language to communicate with each other. If we listen in, we might be able to talk back and maybe even understand what they are saying. But we must remember that human communication is different because we were created in the image and likeness of our Creator, able to hold deep, meaningful conversations with other image bearers—and with the Creator himself.

This article is from Answers magazine, October–December, 2024, p. 17.