Tech Helps Dogs Learn to Talk With Humans

If your dog could speak to you, what do you think your best friend would want to tell you? What would you want to know about your dog's feelings and experiences? Dogs do vocalize. They also communicate with their body language. Consider the many ways we bond and work with our dogs.

They greet us when we come home, guard us, help us do our jobs, and assist persons with disabilities. How would that special bond we share with them be extended and intensified if your dogs could speak? Animal lovers believe that our humanity is improved by our relationship with animals, imagine how our capacity might be expanded if we could actually speak with our dogs.

Taking note of the research, an Amazon-sponsored report on future trends released last summer predicted that in 10 years, we’ll have a translator for pets.

Dr. Con Slobodchikoff, a professor emeritus of biology at Northern Arizona University and the author of “Chasing Doctor Doolittle, learning the language of animals is on the vanguard of animal communication. More than 30 years studying prairie dogs have convinced him that these North American rodents have a sophisticated form of vocal communication that is nothing less than language.

The prairie dogs make high-pitched calls to alert the group to the presence of a predator. Slobodchinoff discovered that those calls vary according to the type of the predator as well as its size. The animals can combine their calls in various ways and can even use them to indicate the color of a nearby human’s clothing.

With the help of scientists are learning how to translate animals’ vocalizations and facial expressions into something we can understand. Recent advances include an AI system that listens in on marmoset monkeys to parse the dozen calls they use to communicate with each other and one that reads sheep’s faces to determine whether an animal is in pain.

Being able to communicate with animals would mean more than just forging closer emotional ties with them. It could eliminate the guesswork in caring for animals and even save their lives.