A professor at the University of Arizona is working on a system that can translate animal sounds into English.
Professor Con Slobodchikoff has been researching animal voice communications for over 30 years, starting with prairie dogs - amazing squirrel-like animals living in large colonies in underground burrows. These burrows have many different cameras used for different purposes. There are sleeping rooms, kindergartens, rooms for the winter, dormers and even a bathroom.
The natural predators of prairie dogs are composed of coyotes, badgers, eagles, hawks, foxes, and black-footed ferrets. Prairie dogs are often killed by farmers. And as Kon Slobodchikov found out, prairie dogs make a special sound to designate each of these types of killers.
The professor conducts observation of animals in a natural environment, building raised platforms covered with camouflage cloth near the colonies. Even his graduate students, after a little practice, begin to discern when the prairie dogs shout "Hawk!" or "Man!"
However, with the development of electronics, the professor went much further. By recording the calls of the prairie dogs into a sound file and building a detailed sonogram on its basis, he found that the cry "Hawk!" contains much more data than meets the eye, presumably carrying information about the speed, spatial location and other parameters of the bird.
Further, working with phonograms of other animals, in particular dogs and coyotes, Professor Slobodchikov first learned to understand their language as well, and a little later created a special vocabulary that, analyzing the sonogram of an animal, translates its speech into English.
According to William Higham, the Amazon representative working with the professor, the device should appear on the market within 10 years, although it will most likely be much earlier. Ten years is the period during which the device will become cheap and affordable for the mass consumer. At the moment, it is quite expensive and is usually ordered by veterinary clinics, since it makes it easier for them to diagnose patients.
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The outlook for this technology is impressive. Imagine: if your dog could talk to you directly - what would she tell you about everything?
