Lonely Luna Leaves Unique Legacy,
Say Scientists

Sunday, August 27, 2006
VANCOUVER, BC - Even after its death, Luna the maverick killer whale is still attracting attention.

Researchers who record noises made by killer whales off B.C.'s coast, to determine how they communicate, have discovered the lonely, doomed orca appears to have mimicked the barking of a sea lion.

The young orca, who was born in 1999, made headlines after separating from its pod in 2001 and spending time around humans around the native village of Gold River in Nootka Sound off the western coast of Vancouver Island.

It was killed in March after colliding with a boat propeller near there.

Luna has left behind an important scientific legacy, researcher Andrew Foote of the University of Durham in England said in an interview by e-mail.

Researchers have known that killer whales are capable of "call matching" within their pods and with other killer whale pods to communicate.

But this shows that Luna appears to have been "call matching" with sea lions.

"He is the only killer whale documented to have mimicked another species call," he wrote. "So he has left quite an interesting legacy behind."

The recordings, made in the fall of 2003 and March 2004 in Nootka Sound and available on nationalgeographic.com, has Luna sounding like a barking dog, similar to noises made by sea lions, also available on the website.

A killer whale normally sounds more like a mix between the tweets of a bird and a whimpering dog (www.compusult.nf.ca/ditt/orcasnd.htm).

"I hope this paper demonstrates some of Luna's individuality," wrote Foote.

He said Luna likely imitated California sea lions rather than other noises because that's what it heard.

"(Luna) was exposed to the sea lions for several weeks at a time and often interacted with them, which may have triggered the mimicry of their underwater barking," he wrote.

This type of "vocal learning" is rare among mammals and is known in humans, dolphins, elephants and certain species of birds.

Luna became the centre of much controversy after local aboriginals prevented Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials from re-uniting the whale with his pod. Some members of the native band claimed Luna was the reincarnation of a recently deceased chief.

Source: The Vancouver Province