Meet Con Slobodchikof , who is presently work on an algorithm that could render the speech sound and body movements of fauna into English . Slobodchikoff , a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Northern Arizona University , has expend decades researchingprairie dogs . His decision : these North American rodent put across using a sophisticated language comprising of other than pitched chirp and bark .
According to Slobodchikoff , prairie dog use dissimilar noises to admonish each other about the case and size of a potential predator . Their lyric is so advanced , he says , that they can specify the semblance of a person ’s clothes .
Slobodchikoff has already developed a tool that converts the chirps and barque of a prairie wienerwurst into a words we homo can understand . Now , he hopes to do the same with the beast we interact with on a day-to-day basis – our pets .
“ I thought , if we can do this with prairie domestic dog , we can sure as shooting do it with dogs and cats , ” Slobodchikoff toldNBC News .
Despite their dopey repute , subject have show that canines are really quite good at understanding – andmanipulating – their owners . After C of co - habitation , man ’s best admirer canread your temper – a fact most pet owners will attest to . Recent enquiry also seems to suggest that dogs canunderstand human languageand they even show augury of reading between the lines . ( One particularly ingenious collie can graspmore than 1,000 English word of honor . ) But there is no doubt that technology could make man - to - pet communication a hell of a deal easier .
Slobodchikoff ’s fellowship , Zoolingua , has already started stockpiling chiliad of clip of dogs " pass along " through organic structure language and vocalizations . These will later be feed into an algorithm that translates the facial expressions , body bm , and sounds of favorite into English .
There is a little progeny . The algorithm relies on humans to interpret brute " speech " , a fact that could be problematic because we be given toanthropomorphize beast . To work around this , Slobodchikoff will use the growing consistence of scientific research that use careful experiment , not guesswork , to work out the meaning behind an brute ’s cause and phone . The close resolution , he says , is a favourite transcriber that will literally decode a hot dog ’s bark ( or a cat ’s miaul ) into English , such as “ I require to eat now ” or “ I need to go for a walking ” .
Researchers have already cracked the vocalization ofprimates . Perhaps then , the musical theme of an animal translator à la Pixar’sUpis not so far - fetched after all .
[ H / T : NBC News ]
