You may think you know your pet, but what if they could actually talk to you? Well, veterinarian Jess French thinks we could be communicating with animals sooner than we expected, and that it could be “one of the biggest, most exciting technological advances in the next few decades.”
Speaking to BBC Science Focus during the Cheltenham Science Festival, French said that humans prioritise visual stimulus – whereas for many other animals, other senses like smell and sound are stronger.
She said we could train artificial intelligence (AI) to understand animal communication better than we can, using thousands of available data points and hours of footage of animal interactions.
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In the future, French thinks this could revolutionise taking your dog to the vet. While the advancement is unlikely to translate what your pup’s thinking into human words, it could bypass the need for a human mediator and pick up on signals that we’re just not able to see. Think Dr Dolittle, but with less chit-chat.
“It will give us a view of that interaction that we would never be able to appreciate just with our own [senses],” French said. “It’s going to capture all of this information that, even if we were trained really well, we’re just not equipped to understand.”
