Nature
PUBLISHED
The internet is awash with talking parrots, dogs and cats. But have you heard of a talking seal? Because in 1976 an aquarium in Boston found out that their seal Hoover could perfectly mimic human speech.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Hoover started his life as an orphan, picked up at Bethal Point, Maine, in 1971 by a local fisherman called George Swallow. At only a few weeks old, the seal needed to be nursed, requiring hand-feeding by a bottle, during which George talked to it.
Eventually, however, Hoover got too big for George, so he gave the seal to the New England Aquarium, Boston, where Hoover lived in relative obscurity.
That was until five years later, when Hoover suddenly started speaking.
The seal was able to say a range of phrases, including “hello there”, “come over here”, “hurry” and “hey hey”. But Hoover wasn’t just talking in the same way that some dogs might sound like they’re saying “sausages”, he was genuinely mimicking human speech.
Visualizations of his sounds show that Hoover's vocalizations were actually very human-like, including the same modulations we use to form vowels and consonants.
It is thought he only started speaking when he hit sexual maturity. Observations of Hoover found that he mainly spoke to other female seals during the breeding season, and so it has been suggested that his vocalizations were acting like the breeding songs of male harbor seals.
But not only was Hoover speaking English that was “clearly understandable”, he apparently did so with “an unmistakable Maine accent”.
It might seem odd that it took five years for Hoover to suddenly develop his incredible vocal abilities. But according to Dr Tecumseh Fitch, a specialist in language evolution at the University of St Andrews, “This time delay is reminiscent of bird song learning: young birds learn the song in the nest but don’t begin singing themselves until they mature.”
“Unfortunately, there is very little else known about seal imitation, and Hoover has since died.”
Curiously, however, Hoover isn’t the only known talking seal. Even dating back to Victorian times there was a touring exhibition of ‘Jenny the talking fish’. Now, as it turns out, Jenny was neither a her nor a fish, but a male Mediterranean monk seal that had apparently been taught to do tricks and mimic human speech.
A poster advertising Jenny dating to 1859 read, “The Fish possesses a sagacity bordering upon dominions of reason, understanding thoroughly the conversation addressed to it, and by its vocal responses and amusing gyrations gives evidence of its complete docility and comprehension.”
Understandably, Hoover also became something of a celebrity, appearing in the pages of Reader’s Digest and The New Yorker, and the television program Good Morning, America. He lived until the age of 14 when he passed away due to complications during his annual molt, with an obituary being published in The Boston Globe.
You can listen to audio recordings of Hoover here, but be warned, they might give you nightmare fuel.
