Harper: All I remember being taught was that bats make high-pitched sounds to echolocate as they fly around, but it sounds like there's a lot more to it than that.īushwick: Yes, definitely. So this research, combined with some other related studies, has revealed that bats are capable of complex communication. His team adapted a voice recognition program to analyze 15,000 of the sounds, and then the algorithm correlated specific sounds to certain social interactions in the videos, like fighting over food or jockeying for sleeping positions. A researcher named Yossi Yovel recorded audio and video of nearly two dozen bats for two and a half months. So what have scientists learned from this so far?īushwick: One of the examples Karen gives in her book is about Egyptian fruit bats. Researchers can apply natural language processing algorithms like the ones used by Google translate to detect patterns in these recordings and begin to decode what animals might be saying to each other. They record sound 24/7 and create oodles of data, which is where artificial intelligence comes in. This new field of digital bioacoustics uses portable field recorders that are like mini microphones you can put pretty much anywhere-in trees, on mountaintops, even on the backs of whales and birds. Harper: So instead of trying to teach birds to speak English, we're deciphering what they're already saying to each other in birdish or birdese.īushwick: Right, exactly. But many scientists today have moved away from this human-centric approach, and instead they want to understand animal communication on its own terms. My master made me this caller so that I may talk squirrel.īushwick: Not quite, but that is similar to how researchers first started trying to communicate with animals in the seventies and eighties, which is to say they attempted to teach the animals human language. So what does that actually look like? Are we trying to make animals talk like humans using translation collars like in the movie Up?ĭoug the Dog: My name is Doug. Her book explores how researchers are leveraging new tech to understand animal communication even in the burgeoning field of digital bioacoustics. Harper: So you recently chatted with the author of a new book called The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants.īushwick: Yeah, I had a great conversation with Karen Bakker, a professor at the University of British Columbia and a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harper: You're listening to Science, Quickly. I'm Kelso Harper, multimedia editor at Scientific American.īushwick: And I'm Sophie Bushwick, tech editor. Harper: Today, we're talking about how scientists are starting to communicate with creatures like bats and honeybees and how these conversations are forcing us to rethink our relationship with other species. And even begin to talk back to nonhumans.īushwick: Advanced sensors and artificial intelligence might have us at the brink of interspecies communication. Harper: Well, powerful new technologies are helping researchers decode animal communication. Sophie Bushwick: Or what your cat could possibly be yowling about so early in the morning? Kelso Harper: Have you ever wondered what songbirds are actually saying to each other with all of their chirping? The episode was first aired on March 17, 2023. And, perhaps, this new research might just start to break down the divide between us and the rest of the animal kingdom. Tech editor Sophie Bushwick and producer Kelso Harper bring us this fascinating look into just what machine learning is discovering about how animals talk to one another. But what about AI for animals? Specifically, science is starting to apply AI to understanding animal language. We all probably know about AI of the ChatGPT variety now. The whole podcast team is out in the field, so while we’re away, we’re bringing back a few amazing oldies from the archive.ĪI is everywhere these days-and it’s being used, or at least some are trying to use it, for just about anything you can think of. This is Jeff DelViscio, executive producer of the show.
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