Humpback Whales Blow Bubble Rings Near Humans
A 2025 study by the SETI Institute and University of California documented humpbacks producing bubble rings during friendly encounters.
Updated on Nov. 8, 2026 in Wildlife
Humpback whales produced large bubble rings during friendly encounters with humans, according to a 2025 study by the SETI Institute and University of California published in Marine Mammal Science. The study analysed 12 bubble ring-production episodes involving 39 rings made by 11 individual whales from populations around the world.
Why it matters
The observations add to a growing body of evidence that humpbacks use deliberate, structured behaviour in their interactions with other animals and people. The researchers' work also feeds into a broader effort to decode whale communication.
The study recorded 12 bubble-ring episodes totalling 39 rings across 11 whales. The number of whales observed relative to the wider global humpback population is not established in the source.
The players
SETI Institute
A California-based research organisation known for its work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which led the whale communication research.
University of California
The public university system whose researchers co-authored the 2025 study on humpback bubble rings.
The details
Most of the whales voluntarily approached boats and swimmers while blowing the rings. The 2025 study builds on earlier SETI work, including a 2021 conversation with a humpback named Twain that used played whale calls through an underwater speaker.
Timeline
2021: SETI researchers held a call-and-response exchange with the humpback Twain.
2024: A SETI study identified purposeful calls made during bubble-feeding events.
2025: The study documenting bubble rings during friendly human encounters was published in Marine Mammal Science.
Culture Shift
The findings extend the SETI Institute's whale-communication program, which began with its 2021 call-and-response experiment with the humpback Twain. The program's stated goal is to use these results to build filters for parsing cosmic signals for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
The research may eventually inform how people interpret whale behaviour when encountering them at sea. Researchers hope AI may one day enable accurate interpretation of whale communications.
The takeaway
Humpback whales appear capable of forming structured, cooperative behaviours that reach beyond feeding. Observers who share the water with whales can reasonably expect them to interact deliberately rather than only reacting to boats.
Further reading
For more on animal behaviour, explore the Wildlife section.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Discover Wildlife.
