Scientists had a groundbreaking conversation with a humpback whale in her own language and it could help humans chat with aliens one day

BI:  What do whale experts and alien hunters have in common? More than you might expect.

For a recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ, scientists from UC Davis, the Alaska Whale Foundation, and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) teamed up.

Their mission: Communicate with whales. And they did just that.

In a landmark experiment, the team had a 20-minute conversation with a humpback whale named Twain in her own language.

Twain and the scientists didn't talk about the weather or the latest fish gossip — we're still a long way from that level of understanding.

What did happen, though, was remarkable.

The scientists sailed a boat off the coast of Alaska and played what's called a "contact call" into the ocean to see if any whales would respond.

Contact calls are similar to a human greeting. Whales use them to call over other whales or let each other know where they are, lead author Brenda McCowan, a professor at UC Davis's School of Veterinary Medicine, told Business Insider.

"They are one of the most common signals within the humpback whale social sound repertoire," Fred Sharpe, co-author and principal investigator with the Alaska Whale Foundation, told Business Insider.

Sure enough, Twain swam up to the boat and circled it. For the next 20 minutes, the scientists emitted the same contact call 36 different times at varying intervals, and Twain responded to the call each time, even closely matching the intervals.

Meaning, if the scientists waited 10 seconds before playing a call back to Twain, she would in turn wait 10 seconds before responding, McCowan said. This type of interval matching suggests Twain was engaged in an intentional exchange, she added.

"It certainly felt like we had been heard," Sharpe told BI, emphasizing that their work is done with a permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service and readers should not try this at home (or sea). "And we hope that she felt the same way, too."

"We believe this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback 'language,'" McCowan said in a statement.