虎鲸也学舌

When it comes to echoing human speech, parrots are the superstars of the animal world—but a killer whale named Wikie may not be far behind.

说到模仿人类说话的时候，鹦鹉是动物界的超级巨星—但有一只叫做维基的虎鲸似乎也不甘示弱。

The 14-year-old orca showed off her vocal skills by imitating her trainer’s words, saying things like “Amy” and “bye-bye.”

这头十四岁大的逆戟鲸通过模仿它的训练员的声音，炫耀着它的发声技巧，可以说出像“艾米”和“拜拜”这样的声音。

Researchers got her to do this by first training her to obey a hand signal that meant “copy this,” which, for instance, was used to instruct her to copy another orca squirting water into the air.

研究员们教会它说话时先是采用训练她服从“照着做”这个手势，这个手势，打个比方说，曾经用于指导她像别的虎鲸那样往空中喷水。

Then, they presented her with sounds she had never heard before—five sounds from other orcas and six phrases spoken by trainers—and asked her to repeat them.

然后，他们让她听一些她以前从来没有听到过的声音—有五种来自其他虎鲸的声音还有六个训练员说的短语—然后让她进行重复。

In all trials, Wikie responded to the command by uttering something that roughly matched the sound that she was asked to copy, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

在所有的实验中，维基都会对指令作出回答，回答时会发出一些跟被要求模仿的声音相仿的声音，这支研究团队在今天的《英国皇家学报》B刊上发表了这项结果。

Sometimes it took as many as 17 tries to get it right, but she got four of them on her first try, including the human phrases “hello” and “one, two, three.”

有时候它要反复尝试17次才能够成功，但有四个短语她头一次就学会了，包括人类的短语“你好”和“1，2，3。”

Orcas form tight-knit groups in the wild, each with their own dialect, so scientists think that their ability to learn new sounds may be key to how they communicate and interact with one other.

野生的虎鲸会组成紧密联结的团体，每一个团体都有自己的方言，所以科学家们认为它们学会新的声音的能力也许会成为阐明它们之间如何与对方进行交流互动的关键。

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