Wei Hanyang took a sip of tea and began to give an academic report to Lan Ze.

The first batch of baby whales who grew up accompanied by robot companions have all reached adulthood.

The life cycle of orcas is close to that of humans. Boys mature at about fifteen years old. Females mature slightly earlier than males. But these marine creatures have no legal regulations and no awareness of health care. They are similar to primitive humans: young female whales,

The birth of a viable first child is usually in the teens.

Therefore, Wei Hanyang already has a large number of second-generation baby whales in his hands.

The first generation of whales learned from their machine companions since childhood, but when they grew up, they were incompatible with the original group.

They use a dialect of whale language mixed with human words among themselves. In addition to catching fish for food, they also use their robot partners' manipulators to rummage for benthic organisms in the sand. This expands their feeding range and provides them with more adequate nutrition.

, naturally rarely go hungry.

Therefore, they all have a wonderful sense of pride. They often use machine partners to exchange information and share each other's lives.

The robot companion is not only a tool used to act as a whale hand, but also a social media for whales.

All the information passed between them is backed up in the institute's dedicated storage area. This is a huge cross-species wealth. From this, humans can get a glimpse of the unique perspective of the toothed whale species and learn about the orcas.

The thoughts and joys and sorrows of a whale.

When the machine partner breaks down, the lonely whale looks pitiful and helpless.

It took a long time to wait for the institute to send a boat to rescue him, and he was inevitably ridiculed and bullied by the traditional whale when he was alone.

As a result, the whales with machine companions gradually became united with each other, forming a "cultural" group that was different from traditional blood groups.

They usually live together. When the whale's machine partner breaks down, they will be escorted to the research institute for repairs together.

The second-generation whale calves are now born. The whale mothers received their children's robotic companions from the research institute early.

For unknown reasons, these young whale mothers use machine companions to teach their calves to learn human language and various concepts in the human world.

Starting from abstract concepts such as circles, triangles, motion, and stops, the mothers themselves reviewed with their children, and then led their children to further learn things that they themselves had not explored in depth.

Mothers worry a lot about speaking human words to these babies. Not only do they study with their children, but they also live near Whale Island forever.

Whatever the researchers need to do with them, they actively cooperate with the children. As long as they can come into contact with living people and have the opportunity to practice speaking human language, everything is easy to discuss.

Even as soon as the institute's ship blew its whistle, a long line of whale mothers and their babies would follow the ship.

A large group of young cetacean women with children hang out in the waters near the research institute every day, and the seafood available to the islanders has become less.

People only eat seafood to adjust their taste. If you can't eat fish, you can eat shrimp. If you can't eat shrimp, you can also eat jellyfish, abalone, sea cucumber, lobster, and sea cabbage. Even if you can't swallow anything in the sea, you can still eat rice, noodles, and meat.

, vegetables. I’m not hungry anyway.

However, the decrease in seafood nearby has raised concerns about whether the whale children and their mothers will starve and suffer from malnutrition. Many children are still nursing.

In the past few years, feeding a small amount was just part of the "diplomacy" of human whales. But in recent years, Wei Hanyang needs to send fishing boats out to sea every year to fish all over the world to supply the parent-child groups gathered in the institute.

Everyone doesn’t know much about taste. Although these marine creatures cannot taste sweetness and sourness, they seem to have their own preferences for the taste of fat and nucleotides. But no matter what they feed, at least these whales with children cannot starve.

.

Although orcas have lived in the sea since ancient times, their fishing abilities are actually far inferior to humans. Humans have many ghost traps. Fishing boats use carefully designed sonar to locate fish schools, and the fishing nets are wider than the mouths of baleen whales; targeting different marine organisms

Various methods of trapping animals have also been invented.

Orcas are very smart, but they are a group of primitive hunters. Peoples in different sea areas rarely cross the sphere of influence of the group. Whales on the east coast of the Pacific can eat seals until they are full, but whales in the Indian Ocean work in vain in the barren ocean.

Nothing gained.

Their knowledge and skills can be passed down, but they can only be taught personally. This was also the case before humans invented painting and writing.

If you are not as skilled as others, you will really starve.

Orcas who struggle to survive never care much about ocean pollution. Humans only use animals for industrial purposes, so they continue to eat them.

However, the institute has deliberately selected species that are edible for humans from the very beginning when feeding them, and fishing boats have also avoided relatively polluted waters.

Wei Hanyang hopes that his whale child will live as healthy a life as possible.

Feeding strengthens the relationship between humans and whales. Groups of parent-child whales linger in the waters around the research institute.

These marine creatures with mechanical companions gradually put forward new requirements for themselves and their children's whale lives.

The official updates and enhancements of machine companions are regarded by them as a special benefit.

Usually in private, even if they just pick up an abandoned fishing net, they will find ways to use it. Even if it is too damaged to catch fish, they will happily drape it on their robot partners and save it to be combined with other things in the future.

, or simply used as decoration.

Except for their teeth, which can be used to hang fishing nets, they will slip off wherever they are hung. But the mechanical claws of the robot partners provide unlimited practical possibilities for imaginative brains.

I don’t know which whale was the first to invent the grid-type device that is convenient for carrying items. There are models that are easy to drag by robot companions, and there are also models that are easy to hang on whales. Some strange objects suddenly began to appear on whales.

It became popular among the group.

There are several special elderly female whales in the institute. They have been close partners of the institute as early as the testing period of the robot partners. These female whales have miraculously become the core leadership of the new group.

But when it comes to communicating with humans, they are increasingly unable to do so compared with young whales.

The work of the institute is increasingly being carried out by a new generation of whales with robotic companions.

The staff prefers to use female whales.

There are physiological reasons for this. Female whales have a gentle personality, rarely lose contact because of running around, and their lifespans are longer.

There are also cultural factors. Orcas are still a matriarchal society. If you control the female, you control the core of the entire civilization.

The second generation of baby whales performed even better than their mothers.

Children as young as three or four, with the help of machine partners, can even clearly express their subtle meanings to humans.

In the process of learning language and knowledge, they have obviously also accepted many unique human thinking logics.

There is a seven or eight-year-old baby whale. Although it does not belong to the second generation, under the influence of the "social" environment, it has learned to speak beautiful human words with clear pitch. Currently, together with its machine partner, it is working with the research institute

The staff worked together to improve the transmission structure of the mechanical claw.

Why does this cultural group of whales actively cooperate with humans?

Wei Hanyang has many guesses.

Lan Ze thinks that the most outrageous thing among them is that they like to eat fatty pork.

Wei Hanyang believes that the meat of land animals is generally very dense, and the fat-rich "light" taste of fat pig belly gives them a special appeal.

By cooperating with humans, you have the opportunity to eat delicious food that you can't usually eat. This may also have some cultural significance for them. Is it possible that they would be more envious of whales?

It's amazing to use "light" to describe fatty pork. Is the pork light? Of course...compared to the soup made from braised pork ribs and sea fish, it may be a little light.

But fatty pork, from which angle is it not bland?

Wei Hanyang also has an even more ridiculous conjecture: whales think they are humans.

The whale, which has been deeply bound to the machine companion, already has some "understanding" of the human world. The ready-made cultural factors provided by the machine companion have become the bricks to build the whale's imaginary world.

The barren and monotonous life in the sea can no longer accommodate them. They long to leave the sea and be with their real "kind".

Some baby whales using brain-computer interconnection models have even tried to understand the colors in the human world.

...Lan Ze disagrees. Is this too outrageous?

The gaps between people: nationality, race, culture, customs, and even so-called "beliefs" determined by habitual ways of thinking. The internal differences of human beings cannot be bridged at all.

A progressive society can integrate different people together in various ways. In a backward society, even those who are different from me will die.

Among the various human races, even if there is another race in the water, what will happen?

Not having long hands is a fatal physiological defect. The robot companion is just an acquired remedy, and is essentially the same as a cripple's crutches or a deaf person's hearing aids.

Orcas in the water and Homo sapiens on land are, after all, very different species.

However, the machine companion has brought about disruptive changes to the orcas. Lanze cannot ignore these.

The robot companion accompanies the growth of the baby whale and helps the adult whale live.

In more than ten years, there have been two new generations of whales, and even a new "cultural" group has been created.
Chapter completed!