WEBVTT - Can We Communicate with Animals? 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.400 Hey, please take a second and leave us a review 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:06.279 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast. 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:11.360 Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:14.680 of iHeartRadio I'm More Cham and today we're answering the 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:18.800 question can we communicate with animals? Can you have an 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:22.400 actual conversation with your cat or a real dialogue with 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:25.959 your dog? And could we use AI to talk to 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:30.040 whales and elephants. We're going to talk to the woman 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.640 who started the worldwide movement to teach pats to talk, 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.640 and we're going to talk to an animal cognitive scientist 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:40.640 about what we know about animal communication. So get ready 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:43.800 to chat with jihuahua's and gap with gibbons as we 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.160 answer the question can we communicate with animals? 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:52.640 Hey? 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:56.280 Everyone, So I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but recently I 0:00:56.400 --> 0:01:00.200 learned there's a worldwide movement to teach pets to talk. 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.240 Tens of thousands of people around the world are teaching 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.480 their cats and dogs and rabbits and even lizards to 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:10.039 use words and even put together sentences. And once you 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:12.600 learn what some of these animals have to say, I 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:14.840 think you're going to be surprised. So We're going to 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.600 talk to two people today. One is the woman who 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:21.400 started this worldwide movement, and the other is a Conicis 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:25.039 scientist who's been researching this phenomenon. Will start with the 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:28.800 founder of the movement, Christina Hunger. Miss Hunger was a 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.399 speech therapist who worked with kids when she wondered one day, 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.600 what if I helped my dog to speak. Here's my 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:40.480 interview with Christina Hunger. Well, thank you for joining us, 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:41.119 Miss Hunger. 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:43.880 Yes, thank you for having me. My name is Christina Hunger. 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:46.800 I'm a speech language pathologist and I'm the founder of 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:50.000 Hunger for Words, which is the whole talking pet movement. 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:54.160 Amazing. Can you describe what Hunger for Words and the 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:55.480 Talking Pet movement are? 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.920 Yes. So, as a speech therapist, I worked with kids, 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.520 and in my jobularly, I worked with a lot of 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:05.160 kids who had different disabilities and disorders and couldn't actually 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:09.320 talk with verbal speech. They used communication devices instead, and 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:12.720 so that really inspired everything that I discovered that dogs 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:13.400 were capable of. 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.240 What did you know about animal communication before you had 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:18.440 this idea? 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:21.799 Very little? And I think that's why I was able 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:24.920 to see this from a new perspective. I knew that 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:28.120 dogs understood words because I had a dog growing up. 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.600 But then once I brought my puppy Stella home, I 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:34.200 was really observing her from this new perspective as a 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.480 speech therapist and saw how quickly she was picking up 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:38.600 on the words we were saying. 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:41.000 I guess you mean like if you tell a dog 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.040 sit or a rollover, or would you like to go 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:45.880 for a walk, and they get excited, then you have 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:48.000 the sense that they understand you exactly. 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:50.840 And so I knew that these associations were possible, but 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.400 I didn't know how much dogs were capable of understanding. 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.160 I just knew that something was there now. 0:02:57.200 --> 0:02:59.799 In her work as a speech therapist, because Hunger work 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.680 kids with disabilities who were non verbal or couldn't talk, 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.400 and she would often use devices that the kids would 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:08.920 press a button on or have a screen on to 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:13.560 say words. And this gave her an idea, did you 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:16.639 explicitly think to yourself, huh, I wonder what would happen 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:20.120 if I tried to teach my dog more words using 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:20.920 these devices. 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:24.280 I had this very clear epiphany moment where I was 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:28.000 watching my puppy Stella, seeing how she was understanding words. 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.120 I was knowing you know, remembering that dog's understand words. 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:34.240 And I was also watching how she was already communicating. 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.400 She would bark at me to get attention. She would 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:39.800 pot her water dish and it was empty, and I 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:42.240 was like, she's doing so many things that kids do 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:44.960 right before they start talking. I was like, I was 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:47.640 in a speech therapy session right now, I would be saying, 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:50.240 they're probably going to start talking soon. So I had 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:54.280 this light bulb moment. If dogs understand words, they just 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:56.680 need a different way to say words, like, could I 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:59.720 make a device for Stella and teach her to say 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:01.880 words if she had a way to say them? And 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:02.840 that's where it all started. 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.320 Now did you actually make a device or did you so? 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.600 My first thought was could I use something that already 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.080 exists that I use with kids. Most of the devices 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.280 kids would use their fingers to tap a very small icon, 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:17.640 like on an iPad or a tablet, but I thought 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:20.320 that would be too tricky with her paw and her nose. 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.640 So then I found just some simple, recordable buttons and 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:26.600 then adapted them eventually and put them all together on 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:29.840 one big board for her, which was then her communication device. 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:32.480 So I wanted, like the easiest way to test it out. 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:35.680 Whoah, you didn't think like I need an iPad the 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:39.240 size of a table. Her Stella just made me think 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:40.839 of what would happen if you give a dog a 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:45.000 phone and the internet? Yeah, right, look up treats all 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:45.320 the time. 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:47.800 Yeah, really different parks that they want to go to. 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.640 So Miss Hunger basically gave her puppy Stella a giant 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:57.200 keyboard had big colored buttons that, when press would say 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:02.400 a pre recorded word like water or walk. Okay, so 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:04.200 you got the system, you put it in your house 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:06.479 for Stella, and then what happened? How did you get started? 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:06.760 So? 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:09.320 I started just with a few words. At first, I 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:11.640 just thought like could I teach her to say a 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.200 few different words to maybe express like some needs that 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:19.920 she has. So I started with outside, play, water, and 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:23.000 then eventually I added like eat and walk. And for 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.640 about a month I did the same thing that I 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.080 would do with kids every day. I just used the 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.560 buttons as I was talking. So whenever I was saying outside, 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.000 I would push the button, show her which one it was, 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.039 also say it with my verbal speech, and then take 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:40.359 her outside. And it did not work right away. It 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.640 took a good month before she started using the buttons 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:45.360 and really was even interested in them. 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.400 Wow. Initially she totally didn't even think it was a 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:50.479 thing to pay attention to. 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:52.520 Oh yeah, for the first two weeks, she didn't even 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:53.479 look at them. 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:58.279 So for weeks her dog Stella would just ignore the buttons. 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:00.839 And I think it's safe to say that anyone of 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.320 us would have just given up by now, but Miss 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:07.120 Hunger's unique background as a speech therapist told her to 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.800 keep trying. And then one day something happened. 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:15.039 And then about three weeks and she literally just looked 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:17.280 at the button for the first time and then looked 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:20.120 up at me, and I was so excited. And then 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:22.360 within a week of that moment is when she started 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:23.600 using it for the first time. 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:27.240 Whoa. It happened quickly once she had that realization of 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:27.960 what it was. 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.040 So after about a month, the first word she said 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:33.760 was outside. And when she said outside with her button, 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:36.280 she went outside and went to the bathroom immediately. So 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:38.799 that was really exciting because it wasn't just like pressing 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:41.400 it to explore. So then I was wondering, you know, 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:44.520 is she going to use outside for everything that she 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:48.400 needs or what's going to happen here. But the next 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:51.040 day she started using her play button when she wanted 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:53.680 to play, and then I think within a week she 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:56.320 started using water whenever her water dish was empty. 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:58.240 I imagine you got very excited. 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:02.760 Oh yeah, I was really really excited when she sat 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:05.760 outside for the first time, But it actually wasn't until 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:09.800 an unexpected milestone and I started getting like really excited 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:12.840 and shocked. And that was just a couple of months 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:16.480 after that, she started using words for different purposes that 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:20.280 I hadn't taught her, like the same what buttons, but 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.240 in situations that I had never modeled. And that's when 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:27.040 my speech therapist s brain really started going crazy with 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:27.920 the potential. 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.360 Okay, this part is important. We'll get into the signs 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:34.960 of using words in different contexts and something called productivity 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:39.640 in sentence structure later in the program. Oh what do 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:41.720 you mean she used buttons for different purposes? 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:44.800 So, like I had always just modeled water when her 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:46.800 water dish was empty or when I was filling up 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:50.160 her water bowl. But one day I was watering my plants, 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.000 which Stella always really liked watching me do, and she 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:55.240 walked all the way out of the room down the 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:58.080 hall to her buttons and said water, and so I 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:00.320 was like, oh, okay, she mut sneed water. I walked 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:02.320 down the hall looked at her water bowl. It was 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:04.679 totally full, and she didn't take a drink of water. 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:07.960 She just came back and kept watching me water my plants. 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:09.080 Wow. 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:10.760 Stella wanted to kind of show off. 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:12.560 Yeah, I like water. That's what she's doing. 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.320 I know what that is exactly. There's a button for that, right. 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.000 And it was just so much more about connection in 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:22.200 that moment than just saying a button or pushing a 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:25.120 button to get something. She was using a word just 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:26.320 to connect and share. 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:29.040 How did people around you react? 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:31.720 It was at that point where they started to be 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:34.320 like amazed as well, Like my friends would come over 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.079 and Stella would hit the buy button when it was 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:38.880 getting too late and she wanted to go to bed 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:40.160 and she wanted them to leave. 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.640 No kidding, Yeah, I could use a button like that 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:44.680 when I have people over. 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:46.880 Right, very functional. 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:49.720 After about a year or so of teaching her dog, 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:52.880 Stella this hunger, decided this was something that couldn't just 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:56.480 stay in her living room, so she started a blog. 0:08:56.880 --> 0:08:59.240 She would write about what her dog was learning and 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.800 her perspective as a speech therapist, and she posted videos 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:06.439 of Stella using the buns to talk. And at first 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:11.199 there were about five hundred people reading this blog, and at. 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:14.600 That point she was using about thirty different words, combining 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:17.840 words together to create her own phrases short sentences, And 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:20.840 that's when I started this blog. One of the people 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:23.880 in the audience had a family member who was a 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:26.480 speech therapist, and she happened to share one of my 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:29.760 blog posts on her personal Facebook, and then this reporter 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:32.400 saw it and reached out and was like, this is 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:34.720 absolutely incredible. I want to write a story on it. 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:37.680 We did an interview and it just blew up in 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:41.040 a way that I never could have anticipated or been 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:45.000 prepared for. Like it was trending around the world. I 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.240 went from five hundred followers to five hundred thousand in 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:49.599 less than two weeks. 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:51.640 Oh, that's incredible. 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:54.080 It was insane, truly insane. 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:57.360 How did you feel when this wave of attention and 0:09:57.480 --> 0:09:59.840 people following you? How did you process that? 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:03.640 It was of course very exciting. I again, never in 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:06.880 my wildest dreams thought it would reach that level of awareness. 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.440 I'm not going to lie. It was extremely overwhelming. Like 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:13.120 I was getting thousands of messages and emails. Reporters had 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:15.240 figured out how to look up my number, outs getting 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:17.480 house all the time, and like I was just a 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.680 normal speech therapist, working my normal job and just getting 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:25.320 flooded with everything, and suddenly it's like once it's out there, 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:26.280 there's no going back. 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:30.920 All right. When we come back, we're going to talk 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.120 about this global movement that miss Hunger started that has 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:38.560 people teaching their cats, dogs, goats, and even horses do 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:41.280 use buttons to talk. And then we're going to talk 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:44.200 to these scientists that has taken this idea to the 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:48.680 next level. Stay with us, you're listening to sign stuff, 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:07.120 Welcome back. We're talking about whether animals can communicate. And 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.320 we started with the movement sparked by Christina Hunger's blog 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.440 where she wrote about teaching her dog Stella how to 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:14.760 use buttons to talk. 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:18.960 Where where what weird? 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:20.160 Yeah? 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:23.400 Weirds? 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.080 The blog went viral and since then people around the 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.400 world have jumped on to teach their pets to use 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:35.120 the same buttons. So he started with dogs, but I 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:37.800 imagine people out there have tried it with other pets. 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:40.880 My friend does it with a cat. What are some 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:43.560 of the other animals. You've heard people try the song. 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:47.280 I've seen people teach pigs to talk with buttons, some 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:52.160 farm animals, cows, goats, horses. I've actually worked with someone 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:54.800 who's teaching her horse and that was really cool as well. 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:57.800 So it's been just amazing to see that once the 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.600 idea was out there, people are just running with it 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:02.840 and trying it in all different areas. 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:03.240 Wow. 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:04.760 Which is the chattiest animal? 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.800 I think dogs still from my knowledge at this point, 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:10.920 but cats have been very chatty as well. 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:14.120 Dogs that live with us are more eager to talk 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:14.520 to us. 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:17.400 Yeah, they're hearing us talk all the time. Oh, it's 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:19.840 just a unique bond between a human and a dog. 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:22.320 What are some things you've heard of other dogs doing? 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:25.319 Like one of my training clients recently had a really 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.960 cool story where her dog said hurt with a button 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:31.240 and then potty with a button, and she took her 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:32.680 to the vet the next day and she had a 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:37.080 bladder infection, something she would not have even known. Whow 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.520 So to be able to express with that level of 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:43.920 clarity something that was wrong and then get help immediately, 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.360 I mean, that's a game changer for the future of 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:47.880 pet care. 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:51.920 Oh, incredible. What's the funniest thing Stella has said to you? 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:56.560 The funniest and most heartbreaking when she's upset with me? 0:12:56.800 --> 0:12:59.680 She has said this several times over the year, love 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:07.679 you No, no, Yeah. 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:09.040 That blows my vine, Christina. 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:09.520 I know. 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:12.640 It's like I never would have thought by introducing a 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.320 love you button that I would someday be hearing love 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:20.120 you know sometime. But when she gets upset, still pull 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:21.840 that card sometimes love you know. 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:24.600 Whow It makes me wonder, what did you do? Christina? 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:26.840 It would just be like I didn't go to the 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:30.520 park or didn't say enough attention to her after she 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:31.559 had asked for something. 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:33.560 Just made me think of my teenage daughter. 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:37.480 A lot of drama plans the door shut. 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:43.200 Yes, maybe I should get my teenage daughter some buttons. 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.479 All right, now, we're going to dive into the signs 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:50.040 of animal communication. As you might imagine, still, it was 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.199 not the first non human animal ever to be trained 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.800 to use signals to talk to humans, and so to 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.920 get a wider view what we know from animal study 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:03.760 in current research, I reached out to Professor Federico Rossano. 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:06.960 I can't get to scientists from the University of California, 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:12.240 San Diego, who specializes in communication between humans and animals. 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:16.800 He has several interesting projects, including the largest citizen science 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:20.840 study on bun pressing pets, and he's involved in efforts 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:24.960 to use AI to decode how whales and monkeys talk 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:27.720 to each other. But first I wanted to know the 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:32.800 history of scientists communicating with animals. Well, thank you, doctor 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:35.320 Rosanna for joining us, Thank you for having me. So 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:37.640 I was hoping you could start by just giving us 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:41.280 a broad history of when did we start getting interested 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:42.800 in communicating with animals. 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:45.960 Well, it's a very interesting question because I believe we've 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:49.240 always been interested in communicating with animals. There are many 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:52.560 cultures that believe, for example, animals have souls and so 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:54.920 you can communicate with them. He can think about all 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:57.760 the fables for kids from two hundred years ago and 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:02.520 even more where we attribute to animals intelligence or emotions, 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.720 and so in that sense, the idea that animals might 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:09.160 have cognitive abilities and even things that they are trying 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.040 to communicate as existed for a long long time. 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:16.480 According to doctor Rossano, a scientist in the last century 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.720 started to wonder to what extent animals can use language 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:24.080 and whether it's the thing that really makes humans different 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:27.360 from other animals. Now, one of the first people to 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:30.200 make the case that maybe humans are not that different 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:34.040 from other animals in terms of language was Jane Goodall. 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.080 One of the first one was Jane Goodle that clearly 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:41.560 told us, look, these chance are communicating with each other, 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:44.560 and clearly they have gestions and they have facial expression, 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.360 they have signals that they convey to each other that 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.440 seem to be meaningful, they seem to be relevant. And 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:54.000 so once you start showing that actually wild animals might 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:57.280 have a code to communicate with each other, then opens 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:01.440 up a completely new possibility. Maybe, just like humans are 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:05.880 thousands of languages, maybe animals each species as at least 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.680 one code that they can use to communicate with each other. 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:11.920 And now the challenges can we crack this code? 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.120 The next step side this tried was to teach animals words, 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:19.360 but they quickly found almost no animals had the ability 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:21.680 to pronounce words like humans. 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:24.440 And so the next step was, well, what if we 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:26.960 teach them sign language. And a lot of animals and 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:30.440 these did learn sun language or at least quite a few words. 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.440 And this is referring to Coco for example, was Coco 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:34.720 in the seventies. 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:36.680 Coco was later, and Coco was in the eighties and 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:37.560 early nineties. 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:41.720 Coco, by the way, was a famous gorilla passed away 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:44.360 in twenty eighteen. They were said to have a sign 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:48.200 language vocabulary of over a thousand words. 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:50.520 There were several others. One of the most famous one 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:52.960 was Washow was a champ that I had learned actually 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:55.320 quite a lot of gestures. And one of the things 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:57.200 that I find most fascinating is he had learned a 0:16:57.200 --> 0:16:59.280 lot of gestures, but one of the signs he could 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.280 never learn was why. It's like, how do you even 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:05.480 teach why? Like? What is it? What is it? The Youngaha? Anyway, 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:08.080 the interesting thing was some of these animals seem to 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.919 be able to learn a few underwards and use the 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:15.080 signs in a way that potentially was interesting. But some 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:20.280 scholars said, look is the equivalent of just Pavlov's dog bell. 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:24.960 Okay, here we get to the first big issue in 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.679 the study of teaching animals to communicate, and that is 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.159 if you teach a dog or a cat or a 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:34.320 gorilla to use a bun or a hand sign that 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:37.360 means food, and they get a treat every time they 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:41.080 use it. Are they really learning language or are they 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:44.040 just learning that if you press that button they get food. 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:48.159 This is called stimulus response. You might have heard of 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.960 Pavlov's dogs, where they taught dogs to expect food every 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:56.000 time their trainer rings a bell. Well, here are the 0:17:56.080 --> 0:18:01.000 lingering questions surrounding examples like Washo the champoor, Coco the gorilla, 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.720 or Stella the dog. Is whether you're really proving that 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:08.200 animals can use language in the same way that we 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:11.520 use language. And so the science shifted gears and it 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:15.280 tried a couple of different directions. 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:17.080 And so in the early eighties, basically there was the 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:19.520 decision that this switcher should kind of be stopped. It 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:22.840 wasn't really helpful in anyway. Some people continued, but the 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:25.040 field kind of moved in three directions that I think 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:28.800 we're very interesting. So one was, well, what if we 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:32.280 actually tried to look at their natural communicative systems? Right, 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:35.520 So there's a famous paper from nineteen eighty on the 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.720 vever monkey alarm calls that basically says, hey, if you 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:41.960 look at vever monkeys, they have these different vocalizations that 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:47.439 seem to be associated to different types of predators. Like ego, leopard, snake, 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:49.960 and so the idea was, what if actually they have 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:52.840 something like words, So maybe we should look more at 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.400 the spontaneous communicative system and what they used to communicate 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.520 with each other instead of teaching them human language. 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.720 That's one direction, looking at the language that animals use 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:06.679 on their own instead of trying to teach them a language, 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:09.520 and later on we'll talk about how doctor Rossano is 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:11.640 using AI to figure that out. 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:15.240 The second direction was what if we look at animals 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:18.440 that can actually learn hum of vocalization and so, for example, 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:21.720 you can train a parrot to start reproducing the words 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:24.880 in that way, it's not just teaching them sign language. 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:27.760 But you can have animals that we know our vocal learners, 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:29.960 and if they can learn new sounds, maybe they can 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:32.639 also start putting them together in ways that might be 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:33.440 more flexible. 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:33.720 Right. 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.080 So, indeed, there was amazing research that was done on 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:41.960 vocalizations and teaching parrots, for example the constant of sameness 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:44.320 or colors and things like numbers. 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.520 Here the most famous example is Alex, the talking great 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:52.639 parrot trained by doctor Irene Pepperberg that had a vocabulary 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.880 of over one hundred words I could count and name 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:59.720 shapes and colors. Alex lived thirty one years then pass 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:02.920 away in twenty oh seven. Then there's the third direction 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:06.400 that the science of animal communication took, and this one 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:08.119 will seem familiar. 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:11.679 The third direction was, what if instead of trying to 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:14.720 do this training that is unclear with sign language and 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:17.600 what exactly do they know, we try to use something 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:20.800 there's a lot more automated, kind of like a touchscreen, 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:23.760 like almost like a keyboard that you can actually push 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:26.840 buttons in and then combine and create sequences. So this 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:31.640 had already started in the seventies, but it became particularly prominent, 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:36.280