EARTH SPECIES PROJECT TALKS TO ANIMALS USING AI

Growing up, one of the first movies I remember seeing at our local theatre was Doctor Dolittle. It was a musical starring Rex Harrison as a veterinarian who discovered how communicate with a wide range of animals.

It wasn’t exactly a triumph when it first came out. Critics panned it, and it lost money at the box office during its original theatrical run. However, the song Talk to the Animals by Leslie Bricussebecame a hit, winning the Oscar for best song that year.

That song was playing in my head this week because of new research involving artificial intelligence (AI). Scientists are using AI-based tools to make Dr. Dolittle’s fictional ambition to talk to the animals a reality.

Animals Communicate With One Another and With Humans

People who live closer to animals like indigenous groups and farmers like my ancestors, have always maintained that animals communicate with one another and with humans. Scientists have been sceptical because they follow more rigorous standards and they try to stay objective about attributing human traits to other species.

The Earth Species Project is a non-profit organization that’s working toward using AI to understand how other animals communicate. They’re convinced that understanding the languages of non-human animals will “transform our relationship with the rest of nature.”

The organization is building machine learning models that build on previous behavioural ecology and and bioacoustics research. For the last ten years, scientists have found ways to learn languages geometrically, which allows us to translate languages without dictionaries or specific examples of sentences.

Earth Species Project Applies Machine Learning to Animals

Researchers at the Earth Species Project believe they can apply the same machine learning techniques to enable us to communicate with non-human species. They’re focusing on using the technology to examine data patterns about animal communication behaviour.

They believe that using machine learning, they can conduct experiments with a degree of subtlety that conventional scientific methods can’t deliver. They’re trying to work out which conditions trigger animals to signal each other.

They’re also interested in how those signals influence the animals who receive them, and what it is about a signal’s structure that triggers animals to respond. They also want to compare the communication strategies of various species and the populations within them.

Dr. Christian Rutz Studies Animal Behaviour and Cognition

For the past two decades, Dr. Christian Rutz FRSE has been studying animal behaviour and cognition. The Explorers Club has recognized him as one of the Fifty People Changing the World, and he’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Professor Rutz is currently a behavioural ecologist at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. He’s also the lead author of a recent article in the journal Science about the Earth Species Project’s work.

As Professor Rutz told Scientific American, “People realize that we are on the brink of fairly major advances in regard to understanding animals’ communicative behaviour.” In collaboration with he Earth Species Project, he’s leading a study of the vocabulary of the Hawaiian Crow and the Carrion Crow.

Vocabulary of the Hawaiian Crow

The Hawaiian Crow “has been removed from its natural environment for a very long time,” Professor Rutz explains. Meanwhile, the Carrion Crow is abundant in the wild throughout Europe due to its highly adaptable social behaviour.

The project involves compiling an inventory of the calls captive Hawaiian Crows use currently and comparing them with those that historical recordings have captured. This will enable the researchers to find out if the captive crows have changed the calls they use.

Ecologists have tried to reintroduce the crows to the wild, but it hasn’t worked out so far. Professor Rutz wants to find out if changes in the crow’s language are part of the problem.

Understanding Animal Languages Could Protect Biodiversity

It’s part of a larger vision of how understanding animal languages could protect biodiversity. As the journal article explains, “Perhaps most importantly, advances in this field could boost animal conservation and welfare.”

For example, understanding how Hawaiian Crows’s calls have changed might explain how obstacles to population growth have affected their survival in the wild. The paper goes on to say, “Machine learning could also be used to identify animal signals that are associated with stress, discomfort, pain, and evasion, or with positive states, such as arousal and playfulness.”

Humanity could even apply this knowledge to improve living conditions for farm animals or measure how human activity is affecting wild animal populations. As with other technical advances, there’s also the risk that people might use the technology to exploit or even abuse animals.

And Another Thing…

Decoding animal language is part of the new story humanity is creating about the world around us and our place within it. It’s sure to foster a deeper sense of connection and understanding between humans and other animals.

I believe that animals are smarter than we give them credit for. If that’s true, finding ways to communicate with them more directly will help us to recognize the value of our fellow animals and that they have both autonomy and inherent rights.

As the Nature article concludes, “Machine learning holds the potential to generate trans-formative advances in our understanding of animal communication systems, uncovering unimagined degrees of richness and sophistication. But it is essential that future advances are used to benefit the animals being studied.”

We always have more to learn if we dare to know.

Learn more:

Artificial Intelligence Could Finally Let Us Talk With Animals

Using machine learning to decode animal communication

Tigers’ Personalities are Unique, Study Finds

Human-Wildlife Conflict Aggravated by Climate Crisis

Environmental DNA Poses Scientific and Ethical Dilemmas