I realize you can just answer, “mysterious aliens beyond our understanding,” but why would a space probe have a mandate of either talk to a whale for 30 seconds or destroy Earth and disable everything in its path on the way to Earth?
Why? What does that achieve?
Not did it just have to be whales, it had to be humpbacked whales. And don’t ask me why they couldn’t fake it.
Spock explained that they could mimic the sounds, but not the language. They would be responding in gibberish.
And yet, 100 years later: Cetacean Ops.
Space whales would know. You know they would.