In the animated movie Up, a boisterous dog wears an electronic collar that translates his doggy thoughts into English words. “My master made me this collar,” he tells his new acquaintances. “He is a good and smart master and he made me this collar so that I may talk — SQUIRREL!”
It’s the kind of scene we’re used to treating as pure fiction. But back here in the nonfiction world, anyone with a pet has probably wondered at one point or another what’s going on in that inscrutable little head. Scientists can’t say. Not yet. Still, there are some reasons to think that devices that decode animal sounds into language that humans can understand won’t be stuck as a movie prop.
Misryoum newsroom reporting points to a set of ingredients that are coming together: advances in computing power, artificial intelligence and ways to measure sounds. Each of these is improving in its own lane, but together they promise to speed up the translating process—turning animal chatter into bits of information that could be decoded by humans. The idea is simple to describe and hard to pull off: you listen closely, you translate carefully, and you avoid convincing yourself you understand what you really don’t.
Of course, the story isn’t starting from zero. Some animals can already talk to us—in our preferred languages, too. Neuroscientist Erich Jarvis tells a story of a parrot that left its California home. It returned years later speaking Spanish, says Jarvis, of the Rockefeller University in New York City. That’s not the everyday experience of a cat owner, obviously, but it shows that language skills can exist outside humans.
Still, those sorts of abilities seem rare. The mental skills and physiological flexibility needed to think up a message and make intricate vocal sounds to convey it are traits present in fewer than 1 percent of vertebrate species, says New York University neuroscientist Michael Long. And with rare exception, none really speak our language. But, according to Long, the gap is not insurmountable—and maybe the larger mistake has been underestimating how much animals are already “saying.”
“Animals are speaking — to use speaking in a very loose way — more vibrantly than we had ever given them credit for,” Long says. Dolphins and whales, like parrots, may make good conversation partners with people. In 2023, scientists were able to use a decoded whale “hello” to enjoy a short chat with an Alaskan humpback. It wasn’t exactly scintillating; the exchange consisted of a volley of whale whups, translated as “hello” in English. Still, it was an interspecies chat. Another group of researchers has since discovered that whale language shares statistical properties with those spoken by humans. With these sorts of advances, perhaps we’ll soon be swapping krill recipes.
There’s also work that tries to understand what makes vocal learning possible in the first place. Some of Jarvis’ research includes mice genetically engineered to produce more complex sounds. He and colleagues are scrutinizing key genes that are active in good vocal learners. Mice with a human version of a protein called NOVA1, for instance, made more complex vocalizations. To be clear, this isn’t a talking mouse situation yet. But research is moving fast.
Long also stresses that communicating with animals doesn’t necessarily require a fancy sci-fi gadget. “Animals are broadly expressive,” he says. The sad yowls of a cat sitting by her empty food dish are no great mystery. Some messages don’t even require a vocal tract. Mongolian gerbils, for instance, thump the ground percussively. Dances, posture and color can all carry messages. And if you’ve ever heard that thump in a quiet room, it’s hard not to think animals aren’t just making noise—they’re coordinating meaning, even if we’re the ones translating poorly.
So while we wait for a gizmo that translates our pets’ thoughts into words, consider the wildly variable ways animals communicate. Long’s cats, for instance, have plenty to say, making their needs and wants “very, very transparent.” Should a cat-human translator ever exist, though, Long’s message to one of his cats would be short, sweet and practical: “I would tell him not to sit too close to the stove when I’m cooking. I think that’s it.”
Erica Schwartz nominated to lead the CDC
Artemis II astronaut recalls “the most unique thing” on the far side of the Moon