Communicating With Animals There seems to be a lot of strange uses for artificial intelligence. I came across one the other day which stated scientists were working with A.I. to figure out what animals were saying. When that dog collar come out which had a voice which told you some of the things the dog wanted by the way he barked, was strange enough, but this is a whole new step up. What would it be like to know what your pet wanted? Can you imagine some people conducting a conversation with a dog or even a cat? I know people talk to their animals now, but they never expect an answer and if they did, there is a padded room waiting for them. Sure, an animal might acknowledge what you say. If you have a dog and say bad dog for example, some dogs get very upset, but they never say they are not. In the last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, they happened to have a talking dog in it. I won’t say more because I don’t want to ruin the movie for you. What could you do if you could command animals and converse with them? I have been thinking about this, and one of the things might be to use dolphins as lifeguards at the beach. Not only could they save swimmers, which they like to do anyway, but they could protect from shark attacks. All you might have to do is tell them to kill that shark. I am not looking to put the lifeguards out of work so they could be the ones to issue the commands. There could be water proof radios attached to the dolphins and the lifeguards could be equipped with radios. The strange part would be when the dolphin contacted the lifeguard and asked for instructions. There are some animals which are considered extremely smart. One is the gray parrot and another is the crow. As far as the parrot is concerned, they already talk but could we give them even more understanding by using A.I.? Parrots make many other sounds and perhaps this is their language and it can be deciphered? This could lead to a deeper understanding between human and parrot. The crow is a truly amazing animal and can even fashion tools and use them. It also remembers faces and can hold a grudge if you hurt one of them. There has been a lot of talk over the years about devices made to look like birds that spy on people undetected. Perhaps the spy agencies would do better to use real birds with tiny spying equipment. Being able to converse with the bird we might be able to convince them to do this for some reward. Maybe there would be a way to convince various animals not to attack us when we are in their territory? For example, maybe things would be a lot better for archaeologists if they could put out a signal to keep the dangerous animals away from them. The signal might be something the animals understand as language convincing them to stay away. Of course, this assumes the animals really have some system of understanding or even language we are not aware of. We could also use animal language for courtesy. When we get up on our horse we could explain to it why we are on it and where we are going to go. We can also ask it to be careful and not rub against trees on the trip while we are riding it. I guess the same could go for elephants, camels, donkeys, mules and all animals of burden. This would also give the animal a chance to reply. Perhaps the animal is not feeling well and will ask us to not ride it until it feels better. There has to be days when animals have problems. Did you ever wonder if an animal gets a tooth ache? The answer is yes and it can make them very ornery. Animals who can talk to us might be able to help us find things, like ancient ruins, lost treasures and many other things. For example, from time to time we search for lost ships, submarines and planes. Let me give you a way out example, Amelia Earhart. She disappeared many decades ago in her plane. If we could ask the animals in several suspected areas, one of them might have come across the wreck and could tell us. There might be a great barrier to trying to talk to animals and it might be they are just not smart enough in many cases to converse with us. Koko the famous Gorilla, knew many thousands of words and knew the sign language and could communicate quite well, so we know talking to gorillas might be the first step in animal communication. She was not the only gorilla who could sign. When asked what death was she said it was being buried in a warm hole. Could this be the start of the planet of the apes? Koko was said to have an I.Q. of between 75 and 90. That is higher than some humans. She had been tested several times. Most people are said to have an I.Q. between 85 and 115. One of the worst uses, as far as I am concerned, would be sending animals into space and they become aware there is no way back, or using them in horrible experiments and then asking them about things during the experiment. It seems there is always a dark side to everything and somehow there is always a person ready to use it. During war time one of the most helpful animals is the dog. With its superior sense of smell, it can sniff out almost anything from drugs to explosives. Imagine if it could talk to its handler and give him even a better description of what is going on. Many a dog will give its life to protect its handler. Today, many handlers and dogs have such a strong bond when the handler leaves the military they take the dog home with them. I wonder if some day the ex-handler and the dog will discuss the different aspects of what they did in the military? There are probably plenty of other uses for animal and human communication I haven’t thought about. People may someday say the heck with robots for companions, I’ll just get a talking dog, or cat, or maybe even one of those smart crows.
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