People left terrified after creepy audio recording of orcas imitating human speech revealed

Orcas have something of a fearsome reputation among humans, and sometimes, they really put the 'killer' in 'killer whale'.

It's perhaps easy to understand why, given that they are more than capable of killing great white sharks or even sometimes beaching themselves to catch seals, with their size and power no doubt making them one of the scariest creatures in the ocean.

But not only that, they are incredibly smart, with Discovery Magazine noting that their high intelligence presents itself in their different hunting abilities, as each pod, which is the name for a group of orcas, has techniques passed down from generations.

Oh, they are also able to communicate with each other - and apparently humans, too.

Unfortunately, orcas are quite a lot bigger and scarier than your average parrot, so the idea of them copying what we say is certainly a bit scarier than the colourful birds.

Either in captivity or in the wild, Orcas are pretty terrifying (Getty Stock Images)

Orcas mimicking human speech

In the audio recording, a killer whale named Wilkie can be heard imitating speech, producing the same sounds of words such as 'hello', 'one, two' and 'bye bye'.

It can even say its trainer's name, 'Amy'.

For some unknown, albeit quite funny reason, it was also taught how to blow a pretty convincing raspberry, just in case they ever land a job as a voice actor producing fart noises for TV.

If we're being completely honest, there's not much chance of orcas suddenly becoming fluent, as it's a long way from a perfect copy, but it still left some listeners terrified.

One listener wrote: “OK, that second hello was a little demonic. Was that really an orca, or the Devil speaking through a ghost box."

Another decided to look on the bright side of life, adding: "This makes me tear up, the fact that we live in a such a beautiful world filled with wonderful creatures."

A third commented: "OK, 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! That’s my day, can’t stop laughing my head off lol."

How orcas can mimic human speech

The recording itself belongs to a 2018 study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, which saw experts from all over the world exploring how orcas seemingly mimic human words.

Josep Call, a professor in evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St Andrews and a co-author of the study, said (via The Guardian): “We wanted to see how flexible a killer whale can be in copying sounds.

“We thought what would be really convincing is to present them with something that is not in their repertoire – and in this case ‘hello’ [is] not what a killer whale would say.

"That is what makes it even more impressive – even 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."

Because Wilke's 'hello' was correctly pronounced more than half, it's believed that orcas learn sound through vocal imitation.

Fortunately, for those of you who are concerned that the killer whales might take on this new knowledge of our language and use it to plot against us, Call added: "We have no evidence that they understand what their ‘hello’ stands for.”