A whale yesterday. Plankton was his favourite.

Marine scientists admitted to being bitterly disappointed at new evidence that whalesong, once heralded as being an example of the intelligence of whales, has been revealed to be nothing but bland,  boring conversations between the giant seagoing mammals.

“We’re very disappointed.” A scientist said. “We’ve devised a means of translating whalesong, using a stunning cryptological logarithm and a computer mainframe we borrowed from NASA. We were hoping for a real insight into their culture, only it turns out that they haven’t got one. It’s all “I’m a whale. Are you a whale? I like plankton. My favourite colour is grey. Mine too. Did I mention I like plankton” and this goes on for hours. They seem to have very limited attention spans. In short, they’re idiots.”

The project did admit that the software was yielding interesting insights into other species. “For example, we’ve discovered that every single male penguin is called Steve, and they spend hours huddled together calling out each others names, and then arguing that “You’re not Steve!”