Opinion

A dialogue with your pets? Do you really want a cat to say you look dog-rough today?

Coco Khan

I can see why scientists think two-way communication is a good idea. But some things are better left unsaid

Mon 3 Jun 2024 05.00 EDT

One of my favourite theories about pet behaviour is that cats see their human owners as fellow cats – just very large, hairless, uncoordinated cats. It’s why, or so the lore goes, our pet cats treat us like friendly felines, sometimes licking or rubbing against us.

How do I know this titbit? Because at some point in the past few years, I joined the ranks of the pet-obsessed millennials. It crept up on me. One day I was idly thinking how nice it would be to get a kitten, the next I was staring into glistening jade eyes, feeling the vibrations of a purr through warm fur, thinking: “Yes, this does seem a fair exchange for lifelong servitude.” Now I participate regularly in the OTT pet-parent customs. I take too many photos, I bore people with tales of tails, and perhaps the most universal ritual of all: I Google every single thing my pet does to find out why.

So perhaps the news of a science prize offering a huge $10m for a breakthrough in animal conversation should be music to pet-obsessive ears. The Coller Dolittle Challenge for Interspecies Two-Way Communication has been launched by the Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University. Named after Doctor Dolittle, the famous kids’ book character who can talk to animals, the prize suggests researchers use AI to help decode animal language (though other methods may be used).

It aims to build on recent animal language breakthroughs that have seen machine learning translate bat squeaks, pig grunts and rodent noises. And though the prize does not stipulate what species the work should focus on – it could be anything from worms to whales – it’s not hard to imagine which animals the OTT pet owners of the world could be most excited by. Finally, we’d no longer need to turn to Google to understand cat purrs (officially one of Google’s most-searched questions), dog whines, why our pooches bury treats or moggies shove things off shelves. We can just listen to our pets directly! Maybe we can someday even talk back!
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