For the first time ever, scientists have documented humpback whales blowing perfect bubble rings during close and curious encounters with humans.
Much like someone blowing smoke rings, these whales appear to be engaging in playful or communicative behavior.
The discovery adds to our understanding of these intelligent marine giants—and may even help in the search for life beyond Earth.
The findings were recently published in the journal Marine Mammal Science by a research team from the SETI Institute and the University of California at Davis.
The study analyzed 12 episodes in which 11 different humpback whales produced a total of 39 bubble rings during voluntary encounters with humans, including swimmers and people in boats.
Humpback whales are already known to use bubbles in smart and strategic ways.
They create bubble nets to trap schools of fish when feeding, and bubble bursts or trails during mating-related competition. But blowing bubble rings at humans is new—and quite different.
These bubble rings aren’t used to catch prey or fend off rivals. Instead, they may be a form of play, curiosity, or an attempt to communicate.
“Humpbacks live in very complex social groups and have a wide range of sounds and tools they use,” said Dr. Fred Sharpe, co-lead author of the study and a UC Davis affiliate. “Now we’re seeing that they may also be using bubbles to try to engage with humans in some kind of meaningful way.”
Photographer and co-lead author Jodi Frediani added that this isn’t just a one-off event. “We’ve now found at least a dozen whales around the world showing this behavior—swimming up to humans or boats and blowing bubble rings,” she said.
The researchers believe this kind of behavior reveals something deeper: humpback whales may be curious about us, just as we are about them. And that curiosity could resemble what we might one day expect from intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
“The search for extraterrestrial intelligence often assumes that if intelligent life is out there, they’ll want to contact us,” said SETI scientist Dr. Laurance Doyle, another co-author. “The fact that humpbacks, which evolved completely separately from humans, show this kind of curious behavior supports that idea.”
The WhaleSETI team is part of a broader project to study the communication systems of nonhuman, non-terrestrial species—in this case, marine mammals—to learn how intelligent beings might try to send signals in ways unfamiliar to us. Since bubbles are a unique communication method not used by land mammals, they could represent an entirely different “language.”
So the next time you see a humpback whale rising near a boat and blowing a ring of bubbles, it might not just be showing off—it could be saying hello.
