We humans love the animals who live with us. And they love us too. Over milennia we have learned how to communicate with each other by reading each others body language. Because we are all binary models ie: 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 brain hemispheres, 2 ears etc. a lot of our musculo-skeletal responses to stimuli are similar. We “raise our hackles” and snarl when angry, we whimper and cower when afraid. Humans have learned to read tails and our animal friends can read human eye and hand movements. We recognize each others’ voices and faces and scents. Wild animals who live close to humans have also learned to read us. Racoons, birds who nest and feed near us, squirrels, mice and rats – even house spiders I am trying to avoid while vacuuming are aware of my movements and what they are signaling.

Fish can be extremely curious. Divers love to play with friendly octopuses, seals, manta rays and dolphins. Divers keep returning for more encounters, sometimes with gifts of food or toys.

But what about whales? They are mammals like us with symetrical brains and limbs BUT -and that’s a BIG but – their scale is Super Sized. The medium through which whales perceive the universe is water so their senses are tuned to that environment and not as acute in air. Humans need special aparatus and training to spend any time in a whale’s world other than at the surface of the ocean. Our eyes and ears are not evolved for the liquid environment so we need to surround them with air in order to focus light and sound. So how can we become familiar with whale body language if we only see the 10% of their body that breaks the surface and can’t correlate their vocalizations with their actions?

Biologist and researcher Denise Hertzing has spent over 3 decades studying wild spotted and bottlenose dolphins in one bay in the Bahamas. The water is warm and clear which makes it possible for Denise and her team to actually interact with the dolphins in their world. Because she can be in the same environment as the dolphins she has learned their body language. She understands the meaning of many of their calls and can relate some of their behaviour with their vocalizations. Her team has even adapted dolphin body language to the human body. The Team can approximate some of the gestures and expressions dolphins use. Instead of rubbing fins with friends as dolphins do the humans rub elbows. Denise knows the pod as individuals and has become very friendly with a few of the females. They know she is in charge of her team and will show their disaproval directly to Denise if one of her team doesn’t follow dolphin protocol. The dolphins choose whether they want to interact with the humans, coming and going as they please. Denise is one of the few biologists who openly studies interspecies communication and the possibility of humans and cetaceans learning each others’ languages.

But what about whales? What does it mean when a whale slaps their tail on the water? In beaver language a tail slap signals a startled reaction or pissed off response and generally means “take off, eh?”  In humpback whales Terry and I have observed that a tail slap can mean anything from  “Hey, give me your attention” if soft and gentle to a warning or reprimand if hard and explosive. We’ve seen tail slaps when humpback whales are playing with sea lions and also when the whales seem to be feeding so maybe they use tail lobs to stun and disorient fish.

I am curious to know whether many body language gestures have  similar meanings and/or intentions throughout the cetacean family tree – a question I will ask the research folks and the whale watching guides who have the most opportunities to observe wild cetaceans in the water.