Arik Kershenbaum

Will humans and animals ever be able to converse? Here’s what science says. In the movie Hoppers, scientists “hop” human consciousness into animal-like robots to talk to other species. We asked the experts their thoughts on how conceivable the plot is.

Will humans and animals ever be able to converse? Here’s what I say...

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Read more about our project to map tiger risk by eavesdropping on the alarm calls of prey animals
www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/news/eavesdr...

New documentary on PBS: Can Dogs Talk?
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...
Do "speech buttons" really allow our dogs to speak to us? I'm one of a number of scientists interviewed, and the answer is...

The research involved testing the responses of deer to tiger presence. As it's rare to see tigers in the wild, we had to make our own, using a faux tiger skin!

@hollyhowls.bsky.social @bethysmith.bsky.social

Each device uses low-power radio to send detection messages and to pass on messages from other devices. A single gateway device forwards those messages to the internet, so the risk map can be viewed from anywhere in the world.

This is also a radically different approact to AI automatic detection. Rather than using huge neural networks running on expensive computers or in the cloud, we use a tiny NN on cheap, low-power devices that form a mesh of detectors that can stay in the field for months or years.

Rather than listening for tigers, who don't roar very often, we listen to the other animals in the jungle. They're always on the lookout for tigers, so we can eavesdrop on them to find out where the tigers are.

An autonomous network of acoustic detectors to map tiger risk by eavesdropping on prey alarm calls Tiger population recovery brings with it increased fatalities from human-tiger conflict. We describe a network of autonomous intelligent passive acoustic sensors that monitor the forest for deer alar...

🚨🐯 BIG NEW PAPER OUT! 🐯🚨
"An autonomous network of acoustic detectors to map tiger risk by eavesdropping on prey alarm calls"
🐅🐅🐅🐅🐅
We used AI to do real-time detection of deer alarm calls and warn villagers when there's a tiger in the area zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Leading zoologist: How animals reveal secrets of our intelligence YouTube video by The CEO Retort

📢How animals reveal secrets of our intelligence
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUfq...
#AI, #LLM, and animal communication, with Tim El-Sheikh from The CEO Retort

I've just joined the scientific committee of the @CollerDolittle Prize coller-dolittle-24.sites.tau.ac.il offering $100,000 each year for scientific research that has used a non-invasive approach to communicate with or decipher an organism’s communication. Submit by the deadline of September 30th!

More information about our group here:
➡️https://www.bioacousticsresearchgroup.org/
@hollyhowls.bsky.social @bethysmith.bsky.social
#TigerConservation #Nepal #bioacoustics

Tiger Conservation in Nepal: Real-Time Acoustic Monitoring for Coexistence - Great Plains Foundation

🐯🦌🔊Read about the amazing work we're doing in Nepal to prevent human-tiger conflict using AI devices that listen out for deer alarm calls!
greatplainsfoundation.com/tiger-conser...
And don't forget to watch the fantastic video by @Grizanderson www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnVL...

Once again, Star Trek nails social commentary. Even if the conflict in the Middle East is "over some piece of land", the reality is that "the basis for peace must be personal".

Movements like @standing-together.bsky.social and Hand in Hand (www.handinhandk12.org) are building that peace.

📣Check out the Listening Fields podcast, where I talk to the fantastic Dr Vickie Pham about recording animals in the wild, meaning & information in animal calls, and how we use acoustic monitoring to aid conservation of critically endangered species 🐅
soundcloud.com/faderadio/li...

@ricard.bsky.social‬ @hollyhowls.bsky.social

New paper! Using AI to track the frequency of vocalisations across a (very) wide range of species
www.ricardmarxer.com/f0-bioacoust...
In wolves, dolphins, etc, the up-down of frequency of their calls is where all the information is. Neural nets can do this automatically!
‪

Turns out that even splittling in half is a bottleneck of some kind - not as good as a single cell, it's true, but still advantageous. Also, Simon's flatworms have remarkable genetic diversity for organisms that should be identical. There's more going on there than we realised!

Organisms can avoid their own cells being selfish (i.e. cancer) by reproducing via a single-cell bottleneck (i.e. egg). But flatworms reproduce by splitting into 2! How do they avoid cancer?

Congratulations Dr ‪@simon-kershenbaum.bsky.social‬ on his first lead author paper 🎉http://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004225012969
Variation in phenotype, genotype, and somatic diversity among asexual Schmidtea mediterranea planarians

Just finished reading Ittay Flescher's remarkable book, "The Holy and the Broken". If you are tired of endless dehumanisation of both sides do come to his book launch at Girton College, Cambridge, on July 16th. Sign up on the link here actionnetwork.org/events/the-h... @ukfost.bsky.social

‪@ittay78.bsky.social‬‬ @ukfost.bsky.social @standing-together.bsky.social

On July 16 I'll be hosting Ittay Flescher for a talk about his book "The Holy and the Broken" - how communities can work together to overcome the hatred and the destruction that we see around us in Israel and Palestine.
6:30 Girton College. Free. Book here: actionnetwork.org/events/the-h...

‪@brbbfreitas.bsky.social‬ ‪@frantsjensen.bsky.social‬ @arikkershenbaum.bsky.social‬ @malavika-m.bsky.social‬ @hollyhowls.bsky.social‬

An AI-Assisted Chat with Dolphins A large language model for dolphin vocalization could let us better understand these beloved marine mammals

There's been a lot of coverage in the media recently of AI and dolphin communication. Here's a good @sciam.bsky.social SciAm podcast that speaks to the actual scientists @drdherzing.bsky.social Denise Herzing about what they're doing. (and to me too)
www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/epis...

A packed meeting to hear Amin Amara and Uri Weltmann, leaders of @ukfost.bsky.social Standing Together, speak about the role of a grassroots movement of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis in opposing the war in Gaza and in building a cooperative, multinational society.

Finally the book is published!
PRIMATES IN PERIL: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates 2023–2025
Updated information about the cao vit gibbon!
Link download:
static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/120...

www.facebook.com/share/p/1E6p...

Building power through Jewish-Palestinian solidarity: Hear Standing Together leaders speak in Cambridge UK Friends of Standing Together is proud to host Amin Amara and Uri Weltmann, two members of the Standing Together leadership, for a speaking tour in the UK. Standing Together is a grassroots social ...

A reminder of the meeting next week in Cambridge where you can hear from the leaders of Standing Together @standing-together.bsky.social working to bring together #Jewish and #Palestinian citizens of #Israel. Sign up on the link below:
actionnetwork.org/events/build...

Cold-blooded culture? Assessing cultural behaviour in reptiles and its potential conservation implications | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences It is becoming clear that the cognition of a species plays an important role in successful conservation, with cultural processes being a fundamental part of this. However, in contrast to mammals and b...

"Cold-blooded culture?"
A great new paper out by my collegues Angela Dassow and Holly Root-Gutteridge @hollyhowls.bsky.social and others on the phenomenon of:
🦎🐍🐊🐢CULTURE IN REPTILES 🦎🐍🐊🐢
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

📣Cambridge, come hear Amin and Uri, two leaders of STANDING TOGETHER, a grassroots movenment that mobilises Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel against war, occupation, and racism.
Thursday May 15 6pm, Woolf Institute, Cambridge
actionnetwork.org/events/build...
@ukfost.bsky.social

Scientists find promising hints of life on distant planet K2-18b Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

The pace of discoveries in the search for alien life is picking up.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
If you want to know more about what life will be like on other planets, The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy is a good place to start
www.penguin.co.uk/books/314542...
#scicomm #astrobiology