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from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish dept.
A NewScientist article discusses how pattern recognition software is being used to help us better understand the communications of animals, including a program that can automatically translate dolphin whistles (but only if the meaning is already known):
IT was late August 2013 and Denise Herzing was swimming in the Caribbean. The dolphin pod she had been tracking for the past 25 years was playing around her boat. Suddenly, she heard one of them say, "Sargassum".
... She was wearing a prototype dolphin translator called Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry (CHAT) and it had just translated a live dolphin whistle for the first time.
It detected a whistle for sargassum, or seaweed, which she and her team had invented to use when playing with the dolphin pod. They hoped the dolphins would adopt the whistles, which are easy to distinguish from their own natural whistles and they were not disappointed. When the computer picked up the sargassum whistle, Herzing heard her own recorded voice saying the word into her ear.
...
Herzing is quick to acknowledge potential problems with the sargassum whistle. It is just one instance and so far hasn't been repeated. Its audio profile looks different from the whistle they taught the dolphins it has the same shape but came in at a higher frequency. Brenda McCowan of the University of California, Davis, says her experience with dolphin vocalisations matches that observation.
Since the translatable vocalization has only been used once, it could be nothing more than a fluke, but if we can teach dolphins new vocalizations with a specific meaning and they actually use them, then we could finally understand each other enough to start gathering the data needed for real communication with a non-human species, which would be an incredible achievement (and might finally force people to accept the fact that humans really arent all that different from other animals).
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:26AM
perhaps the choice of title was bad (the character limit usually gives me the most problems with submissions), since of course we communicate with animals all the time, but being able to have an actual conversation with a non-human species will be one of the more impressive accomplishments of the human race. what they're doing with dolphins is probably the kind of thing we'll need to do to communicate with extraterrestrials (if they exist and if we ever encounter them) since the syntax, grammar, etc, will likely be completely different from anything seen on earth (but at least they'd be able to point at stuff and say the word for it so we could get some common understanding quicker).
this work wont ever lead to being able to ask your cat or dog how their day was, but being able to converse and ask for input from animals with complex languages could have all kinds of benefits. this is the kind of stuff that really could change the world.