A killer can imitate human words

A large mammalian killer whale known as the strongest marine creature is known for having high intelligence, but it was reported that human words could be imitated.

Imitation of novel sounds killer whale | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/285/1871/20172171

Orcas can imitate human speech, research reveals | Science | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/31/orcas-killer-whales-can-imitate-human-speech-research-reveals

This killer whale trying to say 'Hello' in English is the best thing
https://thenextweb.com/creativity/2018/01/31/orca-nt-believe-youll-say-hear-killer-whale-talking-english/

You can see how the killer whispers the human words such as "Hello" "Bye bye" "One Two Three" in the following movie.

Listen to killer whales mimicking human voices - audio - YouTube


Successfully making the killer whispers of human words is a research group of Dr. Joseph Cole of St Andrews University. I spelled out the voice by speaking repeated words to a female spitting orca named Wikie kept at the Marineland aquarium in France. Acquisition of words of Wikie was surprisingly fast, and it was possible to imitate most words repeatedly within 17 times. In addition, Wikie is a killer whales who had been trained to imitate the movements of other killer whales in response to gestures from humans before.


It was known that killer whales communicate with each other using their own words and knew that there were various "dialects". However, it was not demonstrated whether the dialect is to be learned after it was born. Dr. Kohl said that he thought that the human language was the best for seeing the response to the sound which the killer whale had never heard before. The result of this experiment clearly shows that it has high ability to mimic voice, it is thought that the dialect will be a powerful material to support the theory that it will be learned afterwards.


In addition, researchers say that although Wikie is doing well, he can not think that he understands the meaning.