Stranger than fiction is the fact that there already exists a species of animal life on earth that scientists speculate has higher than human intelligence. The whale has a brain that in some instances is six times bigger than the human brain and its neocortex is more convoluted.
Whales speak to other whales in a language that appears to include abstruse mathematical poetry.
They also have developed interspecies communications with dolphins. Whales are the most specialized of all mammals. They are sentient, they are intelligent, they have their own community and they can suffer.