Interspecies communication
Are we there yet? Read the rest of the package. Humans are far from the only species with a gift for gab, and our furry, feathered, and finned friends could have a lot to tell us. Decoding how animals communicate with one another could offer a window into the inner lives of other species and help humans realize that “animals are sentient creatures who think, who have hopes and dreams of their own,” says Con Slobodchikoff, the founder of Zoolingua, a company working on dog-to-human speech.
我们到了吗？阅读本专题的其余部分。人类绝非唯一拥有交流天赋的物种，我们毛茸茸、长羽毛和长鳍的朋友们或许有很多话要告诉我们。Zoolingua 公司的创始人康·斯洛博奇科夫（Con Slobodchikoff）致力于研究狗与人之间的语言交流，他表示，破译动物之间的交流方式可以为我们提供一扇了解其他物种内心世界的窗口，并帮助人类意识到“动物是有思想、有希望和梦想的感知生物”。
The sticking points. Teasing all this out is complex. To decipher howls, squeaks, and clicks, researchers must match the creatures making sounds with what’s happening around them. Prairie dogs, for example, utter a different series of yips when a coyote approaches than when a hawk is nearby. It’s painstaking work, especially for difficult-to-observe species, like deep-diving whales or subterranean mole rats. There are other hurdles. Many animals communicate not just through sound but through visual cues, touch, pheromones, or a combination of signals, some of which might be difficult for us to perceive. And without a multispecies Rosetta stone, it’s hard to know if translations are accurate.
难点所在。理清这一切非常复杂。为了破译嚎叫声、吱吱声和咔哒声，研究人员必须将发出声音的生物与它们周围发生的事情联系起来。例如，草原犬鼠在郊狼靠近时发出的叫声序列，与老鹰在附近时发出的叫声截然不同。这是一项艰苦的工作，尤其是对于深潜鲸鱼或地下鼹鼠等难以观察的物种而言。此外还有其他障碍。许多动物不仅通过声音进行交流，还通过视觉线索、触觉、信息素或多种信号的组合进行交流，其中一些信号我们可能难以察觉。而且，如果没有一种跨物种的“罗塞塔石碑”，很难判断翻译是否准确。
The progress. Over the past 50 years, a growing arsenal of devices has made it easier to observe the sophisticated ways animals communicate. Hydrophones at the bottom of the ocean can capture humpback whale song, and tiny wearable “biologgers” can record a bat’s every squeak. In the last decade, advances in AI have leveled up our ability to make sense of it all. The technology can detect different calls, distinguish which sounds belong to which animal, and spot patterns. Researchers at the Earth Species Project (ESP), a nonprofit founded in 2018 to decode animal communication, recently used machine learning to detect vocalizations of carrion crows and determine which bird made which call. They suspect that more advanced AI could translate critters’ chatter.
进展。在过去的 50 年里，越来越多的设备使观察动物复杂的交流方式变得更加容易。海底的水听器可以捕捉座头鲸的歌声，微小的可穿戴式“生物记录仪”可以记录蝙蝠的每一次吱吱声。在过去十年中，人工智能的进步提升了我们理解这一切的能力。该技术可以检测不同的叫声，区分哪些声音属于哪种动物，并发现其中的模式。地球物种项目（ESP）是一家成立于 2018 年、旨在破译动物交流的非营利组织，其研究人员最近利用机器学习检测了小嘴乌鸦的发声，并确定了是哪只鸟发出了哪种叫声。他们推测，更先进的人工智能或许能够翻译动物的交流。
Large language models like Claude and ChatGPT excel at finding relationships between words, explains Sara Keen, one of ESP’s behavioral ecologists. ESP hopes its own NatureLM—trained on human speech, music, and animal sounds—will be able to interpret the vocalizations of a variety of species. That promise, however, is still theoretical. Yossi Yovel, a neuroecologist at Tel Aviv University, worries that these models will put too much emphasis on acoustic similarities and make mistakes—like lumping together similar sounds that have different meanings. As for a two-way convo? It’s not clear when—or whether—that will happen. Still, “a lot of animals have an evolutionary structure that is similar enough that we should be able to understand what they’re saying,” Slobodchikoff says.
ESP 的行为生态学家萨拉·基恩（Sara Keen）解释说，像 Claude 和 ChatGPT 这样的大型语言模型擅长寻找词语之间的关系。ESP 希望其自主研发的 NatureLM（基于人类语言、音乐和动物声音进行训练）能够解读各种物种的发声。然而，这一前景目前仍处于理论阶段。特拉维夫大学的神经生态学家约西·约维尔（Yossi Yovel）担心，这些模型会过度强调声学相似性而导致错误，例如将含义不同但声音相似的叫声混为一谈。至于双向对话？目前尚不清楚何时（甚至是否）能够实现。不过，斯洛博奇科夫表示：“许多动物的进化结构与我们足够相似，我们应该能够理解它们在说什么。”