Like Google and Siri, scientists are listening to animals and using Artificial Intelligence, not to sell them stuff, but to understand how they communicate with each other. Communication between animals and humans (e.g., dogs, dolphins, Koko the gorilla) has fascinated humankind for a long time. But this approach often puts humans in the centre of the picture. It is anthropocentric and usually lacks an appreciation of how an animal experiences the world – their ‘umwelt’ (the ‘world around’ – lived experience). A dog for instance lives in a world of smells that is not known to us. This research looks primarily at how animals communicate with each other. As Karen Bakker says (see below) “We need to … understand nonhuman communication on its own terms”.
Two new technologies are involved:
(1) miniature microphones which can be placed near animals or attached to them.
(2) Artificial Intelligence, analysing massive amounts of data from the microphones and other observations of what was happening when particular sounds were produced. The AI can detect patterns in much the same way programs like Google Translate works on human communication.
As an example of the findings from one of these studies, Egyptian fruit bats (which look like Aussie ‘flying foxes’ – fruit bats) have been found to have complex language apparent in arguing over food, distinguishing between genders when they communicate with each other and having individual ‘signal calls’. Mother fruit bats, when speaking to their babies, lower the pitch of their voices – the opposite of human ‘motherese’. Their babies respond with a babble response, presumably leading to vocal learning, again similar to humans.
All of this and much more (about plant communication and communicating with bees no less) is outlined by Sophie Bushwick in a Scientific American article where she interviews Karen Bakker, author of ‘The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants’.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-scientists-are-using-ai-to-talk-to-animals