Have you considered species other than orcas? Not that I know a whole lot about whales, but what specifically makes orcas the prime candidate? I know CETI is focused on sperm whales. So, maybe there are other species that would be more amenable to learning and communicating in an entirely new language?
Pilot whales is the other species I’d consider for experiments—they have 37.2 billion cortical neurons.
For sperm whales we don’t have data on neuron densities (though they do have the biggest brains). I’d guess they are not quite as smart though because they can dive long and they AFAIK don’t use very collaborative hunting techniques.
Have you considered species other than orcas? Not that I know a whole lot about whales, but what specifically makes orcas the prime candidate? I know CETI is focused on sperm whales. So, maybe there are other species that would be more amenable to learning and communicating in an entirely new language?
The mein reason I’m interested in orcas is because they have 43 billion cortical neurons, whereas the 2 land animals with the most cortical neurons (where we have have optical-fractionator measurements) are humans and chimpanzees with 21 billion and 7.4 billion respectively. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons#Forebrain_(cerebrum_or_pallium)_only
Pilot whales is the other species I’d consider for experiments—they have 37.2 billion cortical neurons.
For sperm whales we don’t have data on neuron densities (though they do have the biggest brains). I’d guess they are not quite as smart though because they can dive long and they AFAIK don’t use very collaborative hunting techniques.