科学美国人60秒 SSS 虎鲸文化通过模仿我们而揭示出来（在线收听）

Killer Whale Culture Revealed By Mimicking Us

Killer whales, also called orcas, are like dolphins and belugas—they all have a wide vocal repertoire. But orcas also have uniquedialects among different pods. Which suggests the animals can learn new and unique sounds by imitating mom, or another whale.Researchers tested that premise by asking a killer whale named Wikie to imitate novel sounds from another killer whale, like this [Wolf sound] or this [Creaking door sound].

虎鲸也被称为逆戟鲸，就像海豚和白鲸，它们都有广泛的声乐表演系统。“orca的声音”但是orcas在不同的鲸类中也有独特性。这表明，动物可以通过模仿妈妈或从另一种鲸鱼那里来学习新的独特的声音。研究人员通过询问名叫Wikie的虎鲸，来模仿来自另一只虎鲸的新颖声音，来测试这个前提，就像这样[狗叫声]或者[敲门声]。

And then: Wikie's trainers asked her to imitate them speaking English. Here's how she did: ["Amy", "Hello]Pretty impressive, especially because she's using her nasal passages to imitate sounds we make with our vocal cords.

然后：Wikie的培训师要求她模仿他们说英语。她的做法如下：[“艾米”，“你好”]非常令人印象深刻，特别是因为她用她的鼻腔，模仿我们用声带发出的声音。

And a technical acoustic analysis of the original and imitated sounds showed that Wikie was doing a reliable job of mimicry, suggesting orcas do indeed possess the ability of vocal imitation. The study is in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

对原始的和模仿的声音进行的技术性声学分析表明，Wikie正在做一个可靠的模仿工作，这表明虎鲸确实具有模仿声音的能力。 这项研究结果发表在《英国皇家学会会议》杂志上。

So how long before Wikie's fluent in English? Well: "This is not our goal." Study author José Zamorano-Abramson, a comparative psychologist. "We are focusing on one aspect of vocal language, which is the capacity for vocal imitation." Because the ability to imitate implies a way to transmit culture… and preserve each orca pod's unique repertoire. 

那么，Wikie要说出流利的英语还有多长时间呢?那么：“这不是我们的目标。”研究作者JoséZamorano-Abramson——比较心理学家。“我们专注于声乐语言的一个方面，这就是声音模仿的能力。”因为模仿能力意味着一种传播文化的方式......并且保留每个虎鲸的独特特点。