A 1200 year tradition of killing. How long will we continue to look on and then look the other way?

You might think a comment like that came from the days when Rome sent Christians to their deaths in the arena.

A tradition that has occurred for over 1200 years?

I just found a site which listens and records whale songs going on at this very minute! And you can listen to them right now, too!

The cool thing is that you can listen to whales right from your computer desktop, thanks to a new website.

The LIDO (Listening to the Deep Ocean Environment) site offers a live feed to 10 hydrophones sprinkled around European waters, and one in Canada. Several more are scheduled to come soon in Canada and in Asia.

The network’s primary aim is to record and archive long-term subsea noise so that researchers can study the effects of human activity on whales and dolphins. Read the rest of this entry »

Head of a Humpback Whale

Scientists say that they haven’t really cracked what whales are saying. But they have no doubts that whales are communicating ‘something’.

The truth is, the biggest problem we as humans face today has always been language.

Even in the human species, we still have problems understanding each other. Take the example of the Japanese language. The original language, Kanji, was created in a stylized image/character having many meanings. And depending from the province one came, different characters could mean the same thing or have different concepts entirely. It is still not uncommon to still see two Japanese, or Chinese for that matter, pull out a dictionary of words and point to the definition to clarify or make a point. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever ‘talked’ to a whale?

Most of you haven’t, I am afraid to say. Some of you probably haven’t ever thought about it or actually ever needed to.

Why do I ask this question? Well, for one, it puts an idea forward to you that a whale could possibly talk. Just an idea, mind you, but an idea with a possibility.

But what if you could talk to a whale? What if in a brief moment of time, you became acutely aware of an intelligence – an intelligence that is ‘self-aware’ and one that has its own purpose for living?

Tom White is a professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a long-time advocate for whale and dolphin preservation:

” When humans consider whales and dolphins, he says, they must realize that “there is a who there, not a what. This isn’t an object, this is a being; this is a person, not property”. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been known for many years that researchers and scientists have heard whales talking. Or at least scientists and researchers think whales might be talking.

The problem is that they haven’t figured out what exactly whales say.

But I would like to ask you a question.

Most of you have pets. Do you talk to them? Do you instinctively know what they have to say or feel? Now, mind you, it might not be a full language (such as a dissertation on why they prefer one brand of dog food over the other), but do you actually communicate with your pets?

Having said that, probably 95% of you out there are avid pet lovers. You would never think of starving your close friends, your companions. But living with them on a day-to-day basis, you have reality of their daily lives. Sometimes they even feel human in their response to you. Read the rest of this entry »