Humpback whales have long been admired for their intelligence, and their behavior in the presence of other sea creatures has been widely observed and documented.
In particular, the habit of whales to combine to blow bubbles and form a ring around a school of small fish in order to “encircle” them and facilitate their feeding. This hunting collaboration has sparked some interesting speculation about the nature of communication between team members.
In 2021, a team of scientists from the SETI Institute conducted what is called a “conversation” with a single humpback whale named Twain. This involved broadcasting whale calls through an underwater loudspeaker to which Twain responded with similar calls.
Later, in a 2024 study by the same group, whale calls made during bubble feeding events, initially thought to be random and aimless except perhaps as a way to stay in contact with other group members, were hypothesized to have more specific purposes. Some calls seemed to be a way for the whales to give instructions or make targeted comments to the group.
But these studies have not addressed humpback whales’ voluntary interactions with humans, rather than contact designed by researchers, or their use of bubble blowing, other than as a hunting strategy.
A study carried out in 2025 by scientists from SETI and the University of California, published in Marine Mammal Scienceaddressed both of these aspects of whale behavior and documented humpback whales producing large rings of bubbles during friendly encounters with humans that appear to be an attempt to send messages.
Because the SETI Institute’s overall goal is to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe, these interactions have generated great interest. Nonverbal communications, as well as attempts at speech, wherever they occur, are considered essential to deepening our understanding of all forms of life. This applies to non-human species currently on Earth as well as any sentient beings that may be encountered in the future, if space exploration brings us into contact with life forms on other planets.
“Humpback whales live in complex societies, are acoustically diverse, use bubble tools, and help other species harassed by predators,” says co-lead author Dr. Fred Sharpe. “Now, similar to a candidate signal, we show them blowing rings of bubbles in our direction in an apparent attempt to playfully interact, observe our response, and/or engage in some form of communication.”
A candidate signal is the name given to interesting radio waves that can be detected from deep space and which have been the subject of much analysis as to their origin and meaning. The team compared what they see as these attempts at communication by the whales, and the efforts by researchers to understand the messages from their bubbles, as akin to the work done to interpret interplanetary radio signals.
The study analyzed 12 bubble ring production episodes involving 39 rings made by 11 individual whales. “We have now located a dozen whales from populations around the world, the majority of which voluntarily approached boats and swimmers blowing rings of bubbles during these episodes of curious behavior,” said Jodi Frediani, a marine wildlife photographer and co-lead author of the study.
The Whale-SETI team aims to use the results of their research to develop filters that help analyze cosmic signals for signs of extraterrestrial life.
They hope that with continued observation and help from AI, they will be able to accurately interpret the communications, verbal and non-verbal, of whales and other animals in the future. These learnings and techniques could then be applied to communications from outside our world.
Hear the sounds of the pack of whales blowing bubbles
Gn tech
