Scientists Taught Seals to Sing The Star Wars Theme, With Hilarious Results

 The harsh bark of the seal certainly doesn't spring to mind when you're thinking of melodious singing voices within the kingdom Animalia. But it seems the puppies of the ocean are holding out on us: When it involves replicating a tune, they're surprisingly talented.

While studying the vocal learning of grey seals (Halichoerus grypus), scientists taught them a way to mimic human speech and even music, like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and therefore the theme to the classic sci-fi franchise Star Wars.

"This study gives us an improved understanding of the evolution of vocal learning, a skill that's crucial for human language development," explained biologist Vincent Janik of the Scottish Oceans Institute (SOI) at the University of St Andrews.

The researchers worked with three seals named Zola, Janice, and Gandalf. The animals were housed at the university's marine mammal facility with other seals and thoroughly monitored from birth to create a listing of their natural vocal repertoire.

Then came the painstaking task of teaching them. First, the seals were trained to repeat sequences of sounds from their own repertoires. Then they were trained to repeat 'melodies' in their own vocalizations, a sustained call with changing pitch, and a ranging number of repetitions.

Once that they had an 80 percent accuracy rate at this task, the animals were progressed to learning new vocalizations - human-like vowel sounds - by changing formants, prominent frequency bands utilized in human speech through which information is conveyed.

"It takes many trials to show the seal what we wish it to try to, but once they get the concept they'll copy a brand new sound pretty much at the primary attempt," Janik told New Scientist.

Ultimately, all three were ready to copy short sequences of sounds, and Zola was ready to repeat up to 10 notes of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".

Other seals, just like the famous harbor seal Hoover, are recorded mimicking human-like vocalizations, but up to now, nobody had come into being to review precisely how the pinnipeds can "talk".

As it seems, they use identical structures within the larynx to form human sounds as we humans do ourselves.

"I was amazed how well the seals copied the model sounds we played to them," said biologist Amanda Stansbury, formerly of the SOI and now at metropolis Zoo.

"Copies weren't perfect, but as long as these aren't typical seal sounds it's pretty impressive. Our study really demonstrates how flexible seal vocalizations are. Previous studies just provided anecdotal evidence for this."

Other marine animals have also been taught to talk sort of a human, including orcas and a beluga whale, who could actually sing a very well-defined song.

But the very fact that seals use the identical supra-laryngeal structures as humans implies that they may be honest thanks to studying how humans speak, too.

"Surprisingly, nonhuman primates have very limited abilities during this domain," Janik said.

"Finding other mammals that use their vocal tract within the same way as us to change sounds informs us on how vocal skills are influenced by genetics and learning and may ultimately help to develop new methods to check speech disorders."