In the mid-29th century, electroencephalographic communication with marine mammals was still at an early stage, and as late as the year 2877, many scholars still questioned the validity of much of Ugulist thought. There can, however, be little doubt of the profound impact of this contact with the only non-human sapient life form to occur until the year 2751. In that year, using millimeter-wave tomography, the first images were obtained from a planet circling Beta Procyon that indicated the ruins of a long extinct advanced technological civilization. As astronomers' attention focused on this 11.4 light year distant point of light, the discovery of long-abandoned structures built of titanium, zirconium and silica on a cold, radio-silent, dead world could only add to anxieties of a similar fate happening to earth.
Despite this current of anxiety, the philosophical beliefs of gray whales revolutionized much of late 28th and 29th century philosophy. Whales evidently possessed many strange beliefs, and it was often claimed that these were beyond the ability of humans to understand them. Some scientists speculated that in fact, the whale brain was uniquely adapted to understand certain types of ideas, just as whales lacked rudimentary motor coordination skills and the concomitant mechanistic understanding possessed by the more physically agile humans.
Communicating with whales, in addition to the obvious language difficulties, was made all the more challenging by their unwillingness to communicate with non-whale species; this led to the phrase ``Go away'' to be the first expression for which a precise translation was achieved. Indeed, whales were found to have over 26 different symbolic tonal groups which ensconced variant subtle gradations of this concept. The vast cultural gulf between whales and humans also hindered the effective interchange of ideas, as whales perceived the attempts of humans to communicate as something between ``annoying'' and ``aggravating'', and swallowed a number of early investigators whole. These unfortunate events led directly to the translation of the second known expression in whale language, "It tastes like chicken!".