There are many animals on this planet and each of them has a unique voice. They use their voices for various reasons such as marking their territory, warning others of their presence, avoiding unnecessary conflict, etc. One reason they can’t talk like humans is that their bodies are built differently. Humans have a unique voice box that allows us to produce a wide range of sounds, but most animals’ voice boxes are simpler, which limits the sounds they can make. While most of them can’t make certain sounds, some are really good at mimicking human voices that it’s terrifying. Probably everyone knows that parrot species can mimic human voices to a certain level, but have you heard of lyrebirds, starlings, ravens, and whales mimicking human voices?
Lyrebirds
A lyrebird is either of two species of ground-dwelling Australian bird that compose the genus Menura, and the family Manuridae. Other than having an impressive ability to mimic any kind of sound, the male birds tend to have a beautiful huge tail when it is fanned out in courtship display. You might not believe me when I say they can probably mimic anything they hear. They mostly mimic car alarms, sirens, other animals, and camera shutters because those are the voices they hear the most. But it is not hard to find a video of them mimicking a chainsaw or a kid shouting. Here are two videos that I found but I’m sure you can find more if you’re interested:
Beluga Whales
In 1984, researchers at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego, California, noticed something funny: They would hear people talking around their beluga
whale "NOC"’s enclosure, even when no one was nearby. For a while, they couldn’t figure it out, until a diver in NOC’s tank thought that someone had told him to get out. It was, in fact, NOC, who was making a sound like the word “out.”
NOC kept up the vocalizations for a few years, allowing Sam Ridgeway of the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program in San Diego to record and study the beluga’s vocalizations. "The speechlike sounds were several octaves lower in frequency than the whale's usual sounds," Ridgeway, who co-authored a recently-released study on NOC in Current Biology, told National Geographic. NOC made the sounds by inflating air sacs to a much higher pressure than he did when making normal whale vocalizations.
NOC, who died in 1999, stopped the vocalizations in the late 1980s—probably, researchers theorize, because he reached sexual maturity. But why was a whale mimicking humans such a big deal anyway? Because NOC learned spontaneously, through listening to the humans around him—a phenomenon not previously demonstrated in cetaceans.
Here is a video of NOC mimicking human speech:
Starlings
Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae. Starlings have strong feet, their flight is strong and direct, and they are very social. Their preferred habitat is fairly open country, and they eat insects and fruit. Starlings have diverse and
complex vocalizations and have been known to embed sounds from their surroundings into their own calls, including car alarms and human whistling and speech patterns. Here is a video of a starling mimicking sounds:
Ravens
A raven is any of several larger-bodied passerine bird species in the genus Corvus. Ravens are clever birds, therefore it is not hard for them to learn and mimick sounds. They usually mimic foxes or wolves, but
the ravens that live near human habitats sometimes mimic human speech. You can teach them some words and phrases just like
parrots. Here is a video of a raven mimicking a human voice:
There are some other animals that have this amazing ability as well, but I decided to share the ones I found the most interesting. If you want to learn more about the different talents of animals, you can check these articles:
Sources:
Wikipedia
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