Killer whale learns to say 'hello' and 'bye bye'

— -- A killer whale at the Marineland Aquarium in Antibes, France, has learned to say "hello" and "bye bye," thanks to researchers from the University of St Andrews in partnership with the Complutense University of Madrid.

The research team set out to see if killer whales could mimic human speech, the university announced this week. The results were documented in a study published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Dr. Josep Call, a professor at the University of St. Andrews and a co-researcher on the study, told ABC News this new study came after the success of another study his team had done about motor imitation.

“Killer whales observed another killer whale perform an unusual behavior and we asked them to copy it,” Call told ABC News.

In the new study, Call said the sound component was important for the scientists to see whether killer whales could produce new sounds aside from their natural repertoire. For this study, Call and his fellow researchers studied a female killer whale named Wikie at the marine park in Antibes.

In addition to saying “hello” and "bye bye," Wikie can also say “Amy,” and “one, two, three,” according to researchers. Call said the vocalization “is a very different system than what terrestrial mammals use.”

Killer whales' social behavior has unusual features, Call said.

“Some groups are formed by closely related individuals and other groups show dispersal of individuals born in that group,” he said. Some the mammals “are also known by the vocal dialects displayed by the different groups,” he added.

Looking ahead, Call told ABC News researchers will focus on delayed imitation to see how long these mighty creatures of the sea can remember a novel sound and then reproduce it.