Curiosity and concern for the inner lives (or, at least, workings) of the newest artificial intelligence models naturally begets that same care for the inner lives of our old friends in the animal world. Love seeing the afterthought become a research focus

RT @YorkshireWP:

Agree with this post. Have heard and learned from folks who don't. However, no one hurling ableist hate speech at the deceased in the replies speaks for the human–animal interaction field or animal welfare community. Love for our fellow animals begins with love for our fellow man

In a break from the current VC world drama, I pose the question everyone actually cares about. Can we use AI to talk to whales? @ProjectCETI’s David Gruber is building the infrastructure to enable the first human-whale conversation and initiate an interspecies dialogue. We discuss: - David’s journey to sperm whales - How AI can translate a language no human has ever spoken - Sperm whale culture & the whale economy - The seismic societal implications of human-animal communication - The future is going to be much stranger than we can imagine. Enjoy! TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 1:48 David's Journey 12:30 An Interspecies Dialogue 17:14 Sperm Whale Language & Culture 23:48 The Breakthroughs Yet to Come 27:49 The Whales Are Yappers 31:03 Sperm Whales Have Accents 39:47 Verifying a Whale Translation 42:13 What Success Looks Like 47:32 Saving the Whales

My understanding is that mammals in general are typically awed and astonished by other mammal babies I wouldn't roulette my kid on it or anything, but I'm pretty sure cuteness is one of our clade defenses

Mammalian wiring to “not the hurt the young.” Even wild animals can exhibit this across species.

i think AI is about to uncover an entire hidden world of animal communication and what it's already found is insane... > AI found evidence that elephants call each other by name. when researchers played one its name-like call, it approached the speaker faster and called back more, revealing a form of personal naming once thought almost uniquely human > AI analyzed 53,993 marmoset calls and found tiny monkeys may use names too. entire families use similar labels for the same monkey, suggesting they learn names and dialects from each other > AI learned to tell what Egyptian fruit bats were arguing about: food, mating, sleeping spots or personal space. it could even partly identify who was shouting at whom inside a colony of thousands > AI discovered a “phonetic alphabet” in sperm whale clicks, with rhythm, tempo and tiny timing changes combining into at least 143 recurring patterns. their communication system is nearly 10x more expressive than scientists previously believed, and we still don't know what most of it means > an AI trained on 1.5 million zebra finch calls held real-time vocal exchanges with living birds, generating calls as they spoke and getting them to respond with the same timing and flexibility they use with other birds > Google trained an AI on decades of dolphin recordings to predict what sound comes next, then paired it with an underwater device that gives objects their own synthetic whistles. the goal is for a wild dolphin to copy a whistle to ask a human for a specific object, creating a tiny shared vocabulary between species > AI combined microphones worn by wild crows with nest cameras and uncovered quiet calls that may announce when a crow is arriving at the nest and help entire families coordinate caring for their chicks > a robot bee performed the waggle dance real bees use to share the direction and distance of food, and the bees changed their flight paths based on its instructions. researchers effectively sent a destination into a hive in bee language

This dog has a whole Spotify playlist for sitting by his fish

I'm still here I haven't moved on from this

It’s been 2 days of this video on my feed and I won’t even bullshit you, I’ve watched it every single time. This is a precision to one’s craft that very few will ever accomplish in life. It’s mesmerizing.

What happens when we can understand the animals? Because I think that's coming...

Stuff like this is a great reminder that we can fix things, to some degree.

For more than 65 years, UN Messenger of Peace Jane Goodall devoted her life to protecting our planet and its wildlife. On Tuesday’s #WorldChimpanzeeDay, we honour her legacy, pioneering research and unwavering commitment to chimpanzee conservation. 🐒 un.org/en/messengers-peace/j…

The Netherlands built green bridges over highways so deer, badgers, and wildlife can cross safely-reconnecting forests split by roads.

Glad Gramps is in good spirits :) He and his grandson did nothing apparent to provoke the bison and had respected the 25-yard buffer @YellowstoneNPS mandates for mutual safety (nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/s…). Hope the bison’s alright as well! Safer he feels, the safer visitors will be.