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Comment by bostonsre | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone successfully decoded a language of another species with this or other efforts? Or does anyone know what's the furthest we think we've gotten when decoding language for another species?

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We know that cotton top tamarins have at least 38 calls, the calls have a grammatical structure, the calls are learned, and comprehension comes before usage mastery. That pretty much qualifies as a language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton-top_tamarin

I think if anyone's had any success decoding animal language, it's been in a personal setting, with a whole lot of listening, observing, and paying attention.

Each individual animal has its own personality and language which they'll share with you, just like when humans who share a lot of time together tend to form their own language variants.

One of the most helpful books on the subject I've read is "Wild Animals I Have Known" (1898)

While that's personally appealing to me, I worry that we tend to understand what we want to understand - there's a reason we use the expression "if a were a horse" as a parody of empathy. Though of course that's even more true of trying to make sense of other human beings, which I don't think is impossible (just hard).

I think it is very similar to human beings, except relying even more on the non-verbal.

If you have doubts about interpretation vs "facts", then I can only guess/assume that you have not had this experience.

The best advice I can give for establishing a relationship is to think hard about what the animal wants most, and try to offer it in a way that it can understand is connected with you.

"Decoding the language of plants and flowers has been a decades-long challenge. But that changes today. Thanks to great advancements in artificial intelligence, Google Home is now able to understand tulips, allowing translation between 'Tulipish' and dozens of human languages."

https://www.blog.google/products/home/google-tulip/

Soon they will be tailoring ads to improve tulips browsing experience.

  Matthew Feigal
  Plant Engineer, Google Tulip
  Published Apr 01, 2019

Are there even other "languages"? Or are there just signals like "land-predator!" etc?

Dolphins are understood well enough that we know there are regional dialects, and they broadcast individual name identifiers.

We know they're talking at least enough to have a sense of self, but AFAIK we haven't deciphered the culture/language enough to say anything meaningful to them.

I sleep outside most days year-round and the morning chatter of the birds is a delight. I understand none of it. Maybe they, like us, enjoy hearing themselves talk?

I always chuckle at birdsong, and how pretty it is. Most of it evolved to be some form of "GO AWAY" or "COME HAVE SEX PLEASE" that was loud and distinct enough to be heard over great distances and over the other noises in nature.

So, listening to sweet birdsong first thing in the morning is like going to a rowdy bar on a Saturday night and listening to the singles yell at each other over the music.

It genuinely never fails to make me chuckle when I'm on the porch listening to birds in the morning.

> Most of it evolved to be some form of "GO AWAY" or "COME HAVE SEX PLEASE"

You missed "DANGER DANGER" and "FEED ME" and "I'M HERE WHERE ARE YOU" and "HEADS UP GUYS (let's mob that raptor)"

I always love that quote (can't find it) that Elephants have a special noise for "warning! there are bees nearby!", and someone pointing out that humans do too, it sounds like this: "warning! there are bees nearby!"

I'm curious about sleeping outside. Is it normal in your culture or a personal preference? Are you in a tent or exposed?

I’m in a tent, and would consider going without as there aren’t many insects around here that want to eat parts of me. There are coyotes and the occasional black bear and cougar, but I’m fairly close to the house. I grew up in rural USA and an comfortable in the woods. I try not to speak for others, and I haven’t yet met anyone who regularly sleeps outside when not on a camping trip.

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