Beasts a-blurtin’

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This article was published 11/09/2021 (1666 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a human, chances are it’s getting scientists very excited and making headlines around the world.

For the record, we’re not talking about Donald or Daffy or some other cartoon duck. No, we’re talking about recordings of an Australian musk duck named “Ripper” repeatedly saying what sounds like “you bloody fool.”

The 34-year-old recording, recently made public, appears to be the first documented evidence of the species being able to mimic sounds and has researchers reviewing the evolution of vocal language learning in birds.

According to news reports, Ripper, a male musk duck reared in captivity at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, southwest of Canberra, was recorded vocalizing the sound of doors slamming shut as well as the words “you bloody fool,” a phrase he likely learned from his caretaker.

Retired Australian researcher Dr. Peter Fullagar first recorded Ripper more than three decades ago. But his recordings were only recently resurfaced by Prof. Carel ten Cate of Leiden University in the Netherlands, who came across an obscure reference to a talking duck in a book on bird vocalizations.

Ten Cate said he was only convinced that he wasn’t quacking up after hearing Fullagar’s recordings. “When I read it at first I thought, ‘it’s a hoax, it can’t be true.’ But it turned out to be true.”

The good news is Ripper the talking duck is in excellent company, as we see from today’s loudmouth list of Five Famous Cases of (Allegedly) Talking Animals:

5) The talking animal: Hoover the seal

You don’t say: It began on May 5, 1971, on the shore of Cundy’s Harbor, Maine, when a man named Scottie Dunning discovered a small male harbour seal pup. After failing to locate its mother, Dunning called his brother-in-law, George Swallow, for help and the pair searched for the pup’s mother, only to later find her dead among the rocks. According to online news reports, George took the orphaned seal home, where he and wife Alice first tried to feed it milk from a bottle before switching to ground fish, which the seal sucked up like a vacuum cleaner, hence the name “Hoover.” The Swallows initially kept him in their bathtub, but this proved too inconvenient, so George moved him out back to a spring-fed pond where he set up a “pup tent” enclosed by a wire fence. By all accounts, the Swallows spoke to their seal pup constantly. In her book Hoover the Seal and George, Alice wrote: “If George was late in giving Hoover his breakfast (he) found his way up to the back steps … George would yell, ‘Hello, there.’ George and Hoover were great friends. Sometimes Hoover would hide … and would not appear until George yelled, ‘Get out of there and come over here!’ Then Hoover would come out of hiding and rush over to George and greet him with a wet, fishy kiss.” It was reportedly during this time that Hoover began to mimic George’s thick, gruff accent and catchphrases. Thanks to Hoover’s rapid growth and appetite for fish, the couple asked the New England Aquarium in Boston to take him in. At first, the attendants scoffed at notions Hoover could talk. “A few years later, though, researchers at the aquarium noticed that Hoover’s guttural sounds really did seem to be forming words and phrases. He was often telling people to ‘Get outta here!’ or asking, ‘How are ya?’ He could say his name and a few other phrases, all with a thick (New England) accent,” according to CNN. Hoover became a media sensation, but sadly died in 1985 at age 14. He received an obituary in the Boston Globe.

4) The talking animal(s): Elephants Batyr and Koshik

You don’t say: It all began when a startled night watchman at the Karaganda Zoo in soviet Kazakhstan claimed he had heard an elephant talking to itself. In 1983, zoo officials in Kazakhstan made headlines worldwide by claiming that a teenage elephant named Batyr, born at the zoo in 1970, could reproduce Russian to utter 20 phrases, including “Batyr is good.” It was claimed that Batyr had a vocabulary of about 20 words in Russian and Kazakh. A story in the Daily Telegraph stated: “Batyr, a 10-year-old Indian elephant at the Karaganda Zoo in soviet Kazakhstan, can say phrases like ‘Batyr is good’ and verbs like ‘drink’ and ‘give,’ a Moscow newspaper reported yesterday. It’s said that a recording of its voice was heard recently on Kazakh state radio.” The Soviet scientist A.N. Pogrebnoj-Aleksandroff described how Batyr produced human speech by pressing the tip of his trunk against the bottom of his jaw (simulating lips) and also using his tongue. Batyr delighted zookeepers and visitors, but died in 1993 when keepers accidentally gave him an overdose of sedatives. In 2006, an Asian elephant named Koshik captured the world’s imagination when South Korea’s Everland Zoo reported he could also imitate human speech, but in Korean, using his trunk. He makes the sounds by putting his trunk in his mouth and shaking it while exhaling, similar to the way a human whistles with fingers in their mouth. By August 2004, when he was 14 years old and about to reach sexual maturity, his trainers noticed he was attempting to imitate their speech, according to Scientific American. Koshik’s trainers told a team of researchers that he could “speak” six Korean words, including ‘‘annyong’’ (‘‘hello’’), ‘‘anja’’ (‘‘sit down’’), ‘‘aniya’’ (‘‘no’’), ‘‘nuo’’ (‘‘lie down’’), and ‘‘choah’’ (‘‘good’’). It’s unlikely Kohsik knew what he was saying, but his mimicry was uncanny.

3) The talking animal: Alex the parrot

You don’t say: Maybe the phrase “bird brain” isn’t such an insult after all. That’s an easy assumption to make after reading about Alex, a one-year-old African grey parrot that was purchased from a Chicago pet store in 1977 by Dr. Irene Pepperberg, who used him in a 30-year experiment to see if she could teach a parrot to understand language in a similar manner to chimpanzees and gorillas that had been taught American Sign Language. At the time, it was widely believed that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex problems related to language and understanding. Birds were not considered intelligent because their only common use of communication was mimicry. But the work of Pepperberg and Alex (an acronym for Avian Learning Experiment) before his sudden death in 2007 has changed the perceptions of many in the scientific community. According to online news reports, this avian Einstein could identify 50 different objects, knew seven colours and five shapes, and many different kinds of materials like wool, paper and wood. For example, hold up a blue block of wood and Alex could tell you the shape, the colour, and even what it was made of. Alex had a vocabulary of more than 100 words and was unique in that he appeared to understand what he said. “For example, if Alex was shown a plastic key that was yellow, he could distinguish it from one that was made of metal by its colour and material, while still labelling them both as keys,” according to mymodernmet.com. “One of Alex’s most impressive moments was when he asked an existential question about his own appearance. He had been presented with a mirror, and — after observing himself for a moment — he asked, ‘What colour?’ He then learned the word ‘grey’ — the colour of his feathers — after having it taught to him six times.” This reportedly made him the first and only non-human animal to have ever asked a question — and an existential question at that. He died in 2007 at age 31. His last words, after being put in his cage by Pepperberg, were: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

2) The talking animal: Blackie the cat

You don’t say: It remains one of the strangest free speech cases the world has ever seen. Given that an alleged talking cat was at the centre of the case, that’s not surprising. For owner Carl Miles of Augusta, Ga., the story began when Blackie was about five months old. “I had him on my lap playing with him, talking to him, saying I love you. The voice spoke to me saying, ‘The cat is trying to talk to you.’ To me, the voice was the voice of God,” Miles famously said. That prompted Miles to create a rigorous course of cat speech therapy. He trained his cat to say, “I love you” and “I want my mama,” then took their act on the road. In the early 1980s, Blackie appeared on local TV and radio programs, and even hit the big time with a spot on the network TV show That’s Incredible. “However, as the novelty wore off, Carl and Blackie ended up performing on street corners, asking for donations from passersby. After some complaints from locals, police informed Carl that he would need to get a business licence in order to keep up Blackie’s street show. Carl paid the $50 fee for a licence, but something about it rubbed him the wrong way,” according to CNN. He sued the city of Augusta, stating the business licence code mentions many types of occupations, but a talking cat show was not one of them. He also claimed the city was infringing on Blackie’s right to free speech. Carl lost his case, but he appealed the ruling until it came before a federal court, where three presiding judges declared that the business licence ordinance allowed for unspecified types of businesses to require a licence, which would encompass a talking cat. As for Blackie’s right to feline free speech, the judges included this footnote: “This Court will not hear a claim that Blackie’s right to free speech has been infringed. First, although Blackie arguably possesses a very unusual ability, he cannot be considered a ‘person’ and is therefore not protected by the Bill of Rights … Blackie can clearly speak for himself.” Blackie died at age 18 in 1992.

1) The talking animal: Bunny the Sheepadoodle

You don’t say: You might say Bunny is just like any other dog in the world. But only if you ignore her remarkable ability to “talk” and hold in-depth “conversations” with her owner, artist Alexis Devine of Tacoma, Wash. On the floor of their home is a mat with 70 recordable buttons, each one representing a word or phrase. Bunny uses the buttons to communicate her wants and needs, feelings or places she wants to go, Devine told the Tacoma News Tribune. Her favourite words are “beach” and “park.” Says Devine: “She can say, ‘Bunny want go park,’ or ‘park now.’ Or I can ask her when she went to the park, and she can say ‘morning.’” When Devine started posting videos of Bunny on social media, the world sat up and took notice. Bunny has amassed millions of followers on the platform since Devine began posting short video clips of the dog using their “language-board” (an alternative communication device, or ACC) to have human-like conversations. Bunny is able to communicate with her owner by using her paw to step on different buttons that represent specific words, such as “play,” “go,” and “walk.” The dog can even form short phrases that are up to five words long. Bunny is part of a research study at the comparative cognition lab at the University of California, San Diego, headed by professor Federico Rossano. The study is also led by Leo Trottier, a cognitive scientist and founder of CleverPet, a hardware and software company that develops games for pets. The study looks at how dogs are learning language and whether the breed, age, sex or human involvement contributes to that learning. Devine cited a time when TikTok’s beloved “talking” Sheepadoodle used the language board to alert her owner to a piece of foxtail grass lodged in her paw. “Any time she’s able to tell me she’s in pain, specifically where she’s in pain, I’m totally gobsmacked,” Devine told the website Business Insider. “It’s incredible!”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca