Scientists Have Reported a Breakthrough In Understanding Whale Language
vice.com
Scientists Have Reported a Breakthrough In Understanding Whale Language::Researchers have identified new elements of whale vocalizations that they propose are analogous to human speech, including vowels and pitch.
You are viewing a single comment
Imagine if we managed to make a translator for the speech of an animal, knowing what they say and being able to say something back. Literally speaking with animals. That would have been so amazing and revolutionizing.
Honestly? We’d just fuck it all up, and find some way to exploit it.
If they could, the first words they speak to us would likely be akin to “Fuck you!”, or “Just what the fuck exactly is wrong with you people?”
I mean, would animals necessarily make a distinction between humans and other types of predatory or dangerous animal, understand exactly what our impact on their habitat actually is (something like warming temperatures would be hard to associate with us if you didn't know about human co2 emissions or the greenhouse effect, for instance), and understand that our technology is an extension of our control and not some other, strange symbiotic creature? Considering whales have no technology of their own and therefore probably very little understanding of the concept, they might not realize things like ships and fishing boats are entirely our doing and not some massive surface creature that eats all the fish, that land dwelling creatures like us live on top of like barnacles. And assuming they do understand what our ships are, they might hate or fear us from passed down stories of whalers, or encounters with those whaling ships that still exist, but would they think of us much differently than how they'd think of other predators to whales, like orcas?
They might think the boats have trapped us like they trap whales and fish, they probably want to team up against the menace
Yeah, exploitation like this is a big concern in the digital bioacoustics community with groups like Earth Species Project.
You saying this group is good or bad? It would certainly be transformative to hear what the animals are saying, an ancient fantasy of humankind, magic.
So far as I know they are great, I mean it is a concern of theirs. They do some cool stuff, they have a fairly active discord with quite a bit in it.
"Do you think the human chattering means anything?"
First translation
Here is an elephant translator:
https://www.helloinelephant.com/
I dont think its great or anything, a bit of a gimmick. Really, the most decoded animal language is probably prairie dogs, but I've not heard of anyone trying to make a translator for it.