You may not want to admit it, but at one time in your life, you’ve talked to an animal.
Maybe it was letting a dog know it was a good dog or asking a cat where it’s been.
Maybe you gave words of encouragement to an elephant or scolded a sheep.
Whichever animal it was you talked to, one thing is for sure; it probably didn’t talk
back.
But what if it could?
Scientists are working on ways to not only understand what animals are saying, but to
one day talk back, forever changing the way we think about them.
So, how close are we to talking with animals?
Okay, I know what you’re all saying, animals do “talk”, just not with words.
They make noises, they have facial expressions and body language.
But, this isn’t exactly what we’re talking about.
I think it's important to distinguish between what we call communication and language.
Communication is the more general term and it really refers to this exchanging of signals,
sharing and exchanging messages or signals in a meaningful way.
Language is a word that is fraught with interpretations and involved in many debates, whether other
animals have language or they're communicating.
Well the truth is that we suppose that animals have language, but in a lot of cases, we have
to actually prove this experimentally.
But a lot of people are enchanted with the idea of animals having language.
No one has yet proven that an animal or a species has language, partly because the idea
of what constitutes a language hasn’t really been established.
But in the broad sense, language should be a distinct and organized pattern of communication,
with a near infinite number of combinations, that has been learned and used voluntarily,
not in a reactionary or instinctual manner.
When your dog barks when a squirrel runs past, this is a predictable and instinctual response,
so we don’t consider it language.
But there have been studies that have shown some do communicate in a very complex manner
that show traits of language.
Now we just have to figure out how to decipher what they’re saying.
I think the possibility of us having a Rosetta Stone with an animal is very real.
What we have to do is we have to do the experiments to determine the context in which animal signals
are given.
That context is going to give us the Rosetta Stone.
And that’s exactly what’s happening.
Dr Con Slobodchikoff has been studying prairie dog calls because within those high-pitched
chirps, they actually are saying a lot.
They are able to tell each other what the species of predator is, and the alarm calls
are given in response to a predator.
The prairie dogs tell each other whether the predator is a red-tailed hawk, is a coyote,
is a domestic dog, or is a human.
They can describe the physical features of the predator.
With humans, they can tell each other about the color of clothes that the person is wearing,
about the general size and shape of the person, something about the speed of travel of the
person.
Combining years of recorded prairie dog alarms with AI technology, he may one day be able
to create a prairie dog to English translator.
Unfortunately, determining that animals have language is a difficult process.
It's not an easy one.
It takes a lot of effort and time, and it takes a certain amount of money.
One of the main obstacles that slows us down from communicating with other species is that
we don't have a shared code.
While Dr Slobodchikoff is trying to use prairie dog language as the shared code, others are
looking to create a new code, one that can hopefully bridge the gap between humans and
animals.
We've now created a four by eight foot touchscreen, an interactive underwater touchscreen for
dolphins that will allow them again choice and control and it will allow us to try to
understand what the kinds of signals they're using and their own interests, more about
their cognitive abilities.
Dr. Reiss and her team will observe the dolphin’s choices and compare that to their vocalizations
and mannerisms with the hope of decoding some parts of the dolphin’s speech.
Again, to create a Rosetta Stone to help translate and hopefully one day talk to dolphins using
their language.
In our lab, we try to give the dolphins a means of communication using a keyboard so
that they could request and identify different objects and that's what we're working on now
so that they can produce a code themselves.
Again, it's such a challenge though to come up with a shared language.
Well, if it’s so hard to learn their language, can’t we just teach them ours?
Isn’t that an easier way to have an interspecies conversation?
Well, maybe.
For decades scientists have been working with apes to teach them American Sign Language
in order to learn more about both the species and the origin of human language.
8:00 - “So the first Chimp was Washoe, she was wild caught by the Air Force.
They were collecting chimps for the space program...instead of going into space she
joined this sign language project.
She was raised like a human child...all over her caregivers used American sign language…”
Washoe was able to learn over 200 signs, talk to scientists and even taught another chimp
how to sign.
More studies popped up, most famously with Koko the Gorilla, and for a moment the lines
between human and animals blurred ever so slightly.
Some were still skeptical, arguing that these apes were just mimicking signs for a reward
instead of voluntarily conversing.
But other studies were done that showed apes talking amongst themselves with signs and
having private conversations with each other.
They seemed to be using language voluntarily.
Now, even though great progress has been made, some in this field feel uncomfortable with
the idea of bringing in new apes, or any animal, into captivity.
As someone that’s been doing this for a long time, I feel that this research should
never be repeated...but the chimps that do have sign language, i feel it's important
for us to continue to document it, study it…i feel that it's important work because it helps
us understand more about chimps and see the continuity between our species and other species
on the planet and i feel that if we understand them better we’re more likely to treat them,
and the rest of other beings on the planet in a better way.
And that is what may be at stake here.
That’s why scientists are interested in studying interspecies communication and closing
that gap between us and them.
I think if we could talk to animals, it would really change our relationship with them because
people would realize that they are much more like us in many respects.
They have emotions.
They have thoughts...It becomes much more difficult than to treat these animals as property,
as disposable creatures…
MJ “We are taught with our culture...that we’re so special and superior to other beings...when
people see the chimps signing, it’s like the chimps are reaching across that imaginary
boundary that our culture has put up...for a lot of people that helps them widen their
circle of compassion…
.it's going to really perhaps end what Loren Eiseley has called The Long Loneliness of
us being the only species that can communicate with each other.
That would be very exciting to be able to communicate with other species on this planet.
If we were ever able to have a conversation with an animal, we first need to decode every
sound and movement they make when communicating.
This would be our Rosetta Stone, the groundwork for being able to talk back, a scenario that
might change how we think, govern, work, innovate and of course, eat.
So, how close are we to talking to animals?
We really have to abandon our arrogance, and it’s our arrogance that keeps us from communicating
with other humans in other cultures...and it's our arrogance that has probably slowed
our progress in understanding what non-humans are talking about.
We're already communicating with animals in simple ways.
If we then ask the question how close are we to having a more sophisticated dialogue
or exchange with other animals using a shared set of symbols in sophisticated ways, I would
say, we still have a long way to go and we're just in the infancy of understanding how to
do it.
I think it really requires decoding more of what they're doing in their own natural systems
and finding ways of incorporating that into what we want to create as a shared code.
It's complicated but it's intriguing.
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