A team of international researchers have taught a female orca whale to imitate human speech that is now considered to be a world first in a paper published on Wednesday.

Using Wikie the whale, who lives at the Marine land Aquarium in southern France , scientists discovered that a whale could learn new vocalizations by imitating its trainer.

Wikie was able to say a few words like “hello”, “bye bye,” “one, two” and “Amy”.

Most mammals use the larynx to produce sound, although for humans we are able to speak in part because of the motor ability we posses. The same goes for whales and dolphins that can make sounds through their nasal passages, which makes Wikie’s audible performance even more remarkable.

To find out if a whale can speak, Josep Call, a professor at University of St andrews and a co author of the study, showed that the team chooses human sounds that are not already in the whale’s repertoire.

In the wild, whales such as orcas live in ponds and are known to have different dialects, but not many know for sure so instead scientists debate on how it came to be.

Credit: CNN