And with the bonus "What cats hear" cartoon.
Posted on 01/17/2018 5:11:05 PM PST by nickcarraway
The idea of humans being able to talk to and understand animals may soon become a reality. A researcher is working on a device that may be used as a pet language translator in the future.
Using artificial intelligence, scientists learn how to translate vocalizations and facial expressions of animals into something that humans can understand.
Animal behavior expert Con Slobodchikoff is one of these researchers whose work may allow pets and their owners to effectively converse with each other using a pet translator in less than ten years.
Slobodchikoff, from Northern Arizona University, has studied footage of dogs engaged in a range of behaviors including growling, barking and howling, and used AI to understand how these animals communicate.
He hopes that with the help of machine learning, computers can help humans understand what a particular gesture of pets such as the wagging of the tail, or growling really means.
The researcher has been studying North American prairie dogs for 30 years. He found that the animals have their own language system that conveys complicated instructions and commands.
The rodents also use calls that alert members of their group of incoming threats. Interestingly, these warnings include specific information about the predator such as its size and coat color.
Pet Translator Working with a computer scientist, Slobodchikoff developed an algorithm that converted the prairie dog's vocalizations into English. He has since expanded his work to include studying the behaviors and barkings of dogs.
In 2017, he founded the Zoolingua company to develop a similar tool he used to understand the prairie dog's vocalization to translate facials expressions, sounds and body movements of pets.
"If we can do this with prairie dogs, we can certainly do it with dogs and cats," the animal expert said.
Slobodchikoff studies videos of dogs showing different barks and body movements. He plans to use this to teach an AI algorithm about the communication signals used by animals.
The work is still at an early stage but this could pave way for animals and humans having more effective communication in just ten years. Slobodchikoff wants to use scientific research based on careful experiments to decipher the meaning of a dog's behavior.
Slobodchikoff's ultimate goal is to create a device that humans can pinpoint at a dog to translate barks and woofs into English words. If this becomes possible, humans will be able to know exactly what their pets want and would be more capable of dealing with animals in the future.
Fughgeddaboudit! :)
Bark, ruff, bark!
“That french poodle next doot is one hot b$tch!”
We may not be able to translate a cat, but they can read us like a book, and wife & I honestly believe they understand much of our language.
Our cat spells. She used to go her food bowl everytime we said “food”. So we started to spell it: F - O - O - D, now when hearing it she goes to her food bowl. She understands other words and their spelling similarly. Scary!
If you don't immediately recognize a Gary Larson cartoon, you have some great cartoon reading ahead of you. Larson was, and maybe still is, some kind of genius.
Search amazon.com for: gary larson far side books.
There was another funny Farside cartoon that showed in a balloon dialog what the dog hears from his master, it went something like, “Blah blah blah blah blah blah, ROVER, blah blah blah blah blah TREAT blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, ROVER!!”
LOL
I have a cat that plays fetch. He loves these little sparkle balls that he’ll chase when thrown, then bring back and drop in front of you to do it again. Never seen another cat do that.
And with the bonus "What cats hear" cartoon.
It’s interesting, but I think the other animals (besides us) use body language to a much greater extent that we do. I wonder, as the Human species, to we even have the perspective to understand how and how much other social animals communicate to each other even without the Broca and Wernicke centers of the brain.
Yeah. I have a cat. She talks to me ALL the time with grunts and chirps. I swear her favorite words are ‘what’ (what-what-what) and sometimes NO!
I’m kidding, my little talking kitty is really much more eloquent than that.
Oh, that’s it!!
Ginger, yes.
Any time my cat appears before me, she has an intention, a message, a purpose. Her whole body language gives it away. Damned if I can tell what she wants. She’s really good at telling me she wants SOMETHING, much poorer at telling me WHAT it is that she wants. Very poor at nouns, cats are.
That was really funny. I didn’t know they could laugh at themselves like that. I worry more about “those people” when they can laugh at themselves.
My cat will play fetch with those little sparkle balls too. But she absolutely will not drop it at my feet. Instead, she’ll drop it a yard away. Always. Then I have to go get it to continue the game. Which I do, because I enjoy the game.
You have your cat well-trained. And my cat has me well-trained.
Yup. Had to stop watching them when they went full on admiration of osama and never made fun of him and then were just stupid and hateful and not even funny with their portrayal of President Trump.
No training involved. He just has expectations of human behavior. If he drops that ball he expects his humans to throw it!
Definitely room in the world for both canine and feline friends! They both love us more than we love ourselves.
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