{"id":182463,"date":"2025-06-14T00:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T00:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182463\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T00:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T00:49:08","slug":"humpback-whales-are-approaching-people-to-blow-rings-what-are-they-trying-to-say-colossal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182463\/","title":{"rendered":"Humpback Whales Are Approaching People to Blow Rings. What Are They Trying to Say? \u2014 Colossal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2023\/jul\/11\/the-orca-uprising-whales-are-ramming-boats-but-are-they-inspired-by-revenge-grief-or-memory\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">orca uprising<\/a>\u201d captivated anti-capitalists around the world in 2023, scientists are intrigued by another form of marine mammal communication. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.seti.org\/press-release\/whaleseti-curious-humpback-whales-approach-humans-and-blow-bubble-smoke-rings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A study<\/a> released this month by the SETI Institute and the University of California at Davis dives into a newly documented phenomenon of humpback whales blowing bubble rings while interacting with humans. In contrast to the orcas\u2019 aggressive behavior, researchers say the humpbacks appear to be friendly, relaxed, and even curious. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Bubbles aren\u2019t new to these aquatic giants, which typically release various shapes when corraling prey and courting mates. This study follows 12 distinct incidents involving 11 whales producing 39 rings, most of which have approached boats near Hawaii, the Dominican Republic, Mo\u2019orea, and the U.S. Atlantic coast on their own.<\/p>\n<p>The impact of this research reaches far beyond the oceans, though. Deciphering these non-verbal messages could aid in potential extraterrestrial communication, as they can help to \u201cdevelop filters that aid in parsing cosmic signals for signs of extraterrestrial life,\u201d a statement says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause of current limitations on technology, an important assumption of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that extraterrestrial intelligence and life will be interested in making contact and so target human receivers,\u201d said Dr. Laurance Doyle, a SETI Institute scientist who co-wrote the paper. \u201cThis important assumption is certainly supported by the independent evolution of curious behavior in humpback whales.\u201d (via <a href=\"https:\/\/petapixel.com\/2025\/06\/09\/scientists-photograph-humpback-whales-blowing-bubble-rings-to-speak-to-humans\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">PetaPixel<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"693\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/whales-1.jpg\" alt=\"a composite of 12 bubble rings\" class=\"wp-image-457041\"  \/>A composite image of at least one bubble ring from each interaction<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do stories and artists like this matter to you?<\/strong> Become a <a href=\"https:\/\/colossal.local\/members\/\" data-type=\"page\" data-id=\"118516\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Colossal Member<\/a> now, and support independent arts publishing.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Hide advertising<\/li>\n<li>Save your favorite articles<\/li>\n<li>Get 15% off in the <a href=\"https:\/\/colossal.shop\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Colossal Shop<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Receive members-only newsletter<\/li>\n<li>Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the \u201corca uprising\u201d captivated anti-capitalists around the world in 2023, scientists are intrigued by another form of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3847],"tags":[16007,70,16,15,359,26088,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-182463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ocean","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-video","13":"tag-whales","14":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}