There is no doubt that we'd love to understand exactly what are pets are saying, right? Con Slobodchikoff, a professor at Northern Arizona University, has studied the behaviour of prairie dogs for more than 30 years and he and his colleagues found that prairie dogs, which are not actually dogs at all, but North American rodents, use “a sophisticated communication system that has all the aspects of language."
According to Slobodchikoff, rodents use “words” for different species of predator and can describe the colour of clothes on a human, or the coats of coyotes or dogs. The researcher, who founded a company called “Zoolingua”, seems convinced that other animals use similarly decipherable language. Through Zoolingua, Slobodchikoff hopes to soon release a cat and dog translation device.
“So many people would dearly love to talk to their dog or cat or at least find out what they are trying to communicate. A lot of people talk to their dogs and share their innermost secrets. 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,” Slobodchikoff told a leading news portal. Also, Prairie dogs are highly social creatures which congregate in underground burrows called villages. When a predator is close to a village — usually, a coyote or hawk — the first prairie dog to spot it will call out to warn neighbours. It’s an adorable or very annoying ‘chee chee chee chee’ tune called in a high, squeaky voice.
Over the years, the researchers have recorded hundreds of hours of prairie dog calls using microphones hidden beside bushes and burrows. One experiment was particularly impressive. Slobodchikoff noticed that the animals’ calls for humans exhibited significant variation, which made him wonder whether or not the little rodents were actually describing predators, not just differentiating them, communicating something about the particular human or coyote. He team ultimately learned that the calls can be clustered into different groups with each cluster having its own signature set of frequencies and tones. In other words, it looks like prairie dogs employ specific ‘language’ of some sort. Prairie dogs also seem capable of differentiating between some abstract shapes.
Slobodchikoff says that he’s been around prairie dogs so long that he doesn’t need a computer to translate the rodents’ calls. He can tell the difference between certain calls by ear. The scientist is actually confident that in the near future, possibly no later than ten years from now, a device will be able to translate some of the messages animals like your pet dog or cat convey. How cool would that be, right?
