The quest to decode animal communication is gaining momentum, driven by advancements in AI and substantial funding like the $10 million prize from the Jeremy Coller Foundation. Researchers are focusing on cetaceans, whose vocalizations show complex structures. Projects like Ceti aim to decipher sperm whale codas, revealing nuanced communication patterns. Google introduced DolphinGemma to interpret dolphin sounds, building upon decades of research. This intertwining of animal and human linguistic systems illustrates a fascinating potential for interspecies dialogue as scientists push to break down communication barriers, aiming for results by as soon as 2026.
Charles Darwin suggested that humans learned to speak by mimicking birdsong: our ancestors' first words may have been a kind of interspecies exchange.
Project Ceti (the Cetacean Translation Initiative) is using AI to analyze codas in order to reveal the mysteries of sperm whale speech.
Ceti has already isolated a click that may be a form of punctuation, and they hope to speak whaleish as soon as 2026.
Last month, Google released DolphinGemma, an AI program to translate dolphins, trained on 40 years of data.
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