Amazon Report Predicts Pet Translation Devices By 2027 (cbslocal.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Devices that can talk to our pet dogs and cats could be less than 10 years away, according to a report Amazon commissioned that was co-authored by futurist William Higham. "Innovative products that succeed are based around genuine and major consumer needs," Higham wrote, noting the tremendous amounts already spent on our pets, and concluding, "Somebody is going to put this together." Amazon already sells one dubious device that converts human voices into meows using samples from 25 cats, according to the Guardian. (One reviewer who tested the device wrote that "the cat seems puzzled.") But Amazon's report also cites the work of Con Slobodchikoff, a professor emeritus in Northern Arizona University's biology department, who spent 30 years studying the behavior of prairie dogs. Slobodchikoff discovered prairie dogs have different words for colors and for species of predators, and is now already raising money to develop a translation device for pets.
Although Slobodchikoff concedes that "With cats I'm not sure what they'd have to say. A lot of times it might just be 'you idiot, just feed me and leave me alone.'"

Comments

Re:Obligatory

[Baron_Yam]

In fact, context and having even a limited understanding of the animal's instincts combined with personal experience with the specific pet in question would have to be better than reasonable expectations of the accuracy of any such device... by orders of magnitude.

idiots and their pets

[OppMan29]

When will people learn that animals arent people. I guess someone out there is gonna make easy money ..

Re:Timmy fell down the well!

[Areyoukiddingme]

Of course, there are some sounds that are natural, like growling when alarmed, barking wildly when afraid, yelping when hurt, whimpering when begging. But I'm guessing that as we learn more about dogs, we'll find that there is a very limited vocabulary that dogs are capable of using.

A very limited verbal vocabulary, certainly. And yes, heavily distorted by growing up in a human "pack' that really doesn't understand her properly. But hidden observation of wolves in the wild show that canids in general have a fairly large vocabulary. It's just mostly nonverbal. Which is why any product that attempts to "translate" a pet purely verbally is made of fail from the very start.

I kind of wanted to post this at the top level, in hopes of better moderation, but your last paragraph was too good of an opening.

Dogs, cats, even some of the larger rodents commonly kept as pets, all "speak" quite a bit nonverbally. Those nonverbal "words" are also more universal from pet to pet in different households. Your dog learned to bark as an attention signal, but "spoke" by moving to what she wanted. None of mine ever did it that way, because they were taught not to bark in the house. But I bet your dog and mine both expressed remorse in exactly the same body language. Dogs all know how to say "Sorry boss," and they all do it the same way wolves do. Every cat I've ever known could express disdain, at various levels of intensity, from the flicked ear to the jaw dropping yawn, body language they still share with the big cats. I'm told by people who've kept them that guinea pigs and fancy rats have specific preening behaviors that mean things, though I don't remember details since I never had a pet of either of those species myself.

Every animal "talks", but the parts of their brains that handle what language they have generally aren't wired to their vocal cords. Certainly not exclusively. Humans are so extremely verbal that they forget that they even have body language, and as the argument further up-thread demonstrates, when they remember, can't even agree on what it means. Meanwhile a cat can say more with her tail than some humans who call themselves poets can say in 64 couplets.

Re:understanding cats

[AmiMoJo]

I can't see how it could really work with cats. Cat communication is mostly non-verbal, so it would need a camera to look at them and good luck getting that to work with black cats. My cat is all black and it's really hard to get good photos of him with even a DSLR, let alone a phone camera.

Kittens do vocalize more than adults, but mostly to get the attention of their mother rather than communicate what they want. When they grow up the naturally stop using their voices, except when trying to intimidate other cats. Domesticated cats often learn to talk to humans because it's a very effective way to get a response, but they aren't really saying anything, just making a noise that causes their staff to pay attention. In other words it's little more than what a human communicates by ringing a bell to summon their servants.

To understand what the cat is feeling you need to look at it and observe its behaviour. Even then, they tend to communicate things like "I want to be fed" by simply going to the place where they are normally fed or sitting on your face until you get out of bed.