I remember when in 2008, NASA broadcasted and transmitted the Beatles' song "Across the Universe" into the deep space. It was to celebrate NASA’s 50th birthday. For NASA this was only a publicity act, for the guys in the pub, it was a conversation topic: “Just imagine! how awesome would it be if we could actually communicate with the aliens?”. Only fifteen years since then, and we are practically living in a different technological era. Smart phones have swept every corner of the earth and artificial intelligence is at the gates of unpredictable breakthroughs. Just open up google translate and you can
manage communication with almost any human living on the blue planet. As an applied linguist and a language teacher however, there is one question that remains on my mind. Why do we still know so little about inter-specie communication.


There is enough evidence to convince us that man and dog have lived side by side for over 15000 years. The earliest civilisations developed between 3000-4000 years ago. So one might say before different human cultures come in contact with one another and learn each other’s language, man and dog had learned to communicate with each other. Our ability to understand our furry companions however, has remained more or less the same. There has not been any real progress there for thousands of years.


A while ago, I decided to look into this a bit more. I searched the academic journals and articles. There is so little done on the issue. On the part of linguists there has almost been no effort. Anthropologists have tried to improve communication with primates. But even there, the general trend has been to teach primates human language instead of human learning the primates’ language. But when it comes to how man communicates with domestic animals, namely cats and
dogs, there is practically nothing out there.


I have lived all my adult life with cats and have photographed urban cats in their natural environments for months. So I think like every other pet owner, I have learned an inter-specie language. There are several ways in which cats express themselves to human. Mewing is the
most obvious one but it is by no means the most effective one. Cats use their eyes to communicate with one another. Between cats, blinking is used to communicate peace and friendliness, but they can do more with their eyes. If you have recently adopted a cat, try this little trick. Teach them that blinking means “yes”, and not blinking means “no”. Do this and you would be shocked by how much of what you say your cat understands and responds to. In fact, language comprehension
abilities of cats is far beyond what any linguist or anthropologist would estimate.

I wonder if AI would be able to improve the way we communicate with other species. Not only with our pets, but also other animals or even plants. I think this is a definite possibility. What do you reckon?