If We Could Talk To The Animals….

From the beginning of human history, there have always been a few dreams which have inspired scientists and inventors.

LOL, Can I Haz Banana?

The dream of flight, for instance, but we’ve got that one.  Turning lead into gold is not a reality yet but, with the discovery of the Higgs Boson, I think the day  may be close when we can turn anything into anything else, with just a slight risk of blowing up the galaxy.  Immortality may happen eventually, but probably only after we evolve into cyborgs, and I’m not sure we want that.  Talking to the animals, however, may be just around the corner.

They are doing an experiment now with Orangutans at the Miami Zoo which is both brilliant in its simplicity and amazing in its implications.  They are teaching the zoo’s 6 Orangutans how to use an iPad.  “We’ll ask them to identify ‘Where’s the coconut?’, and they’ll point it out,” Linda Jacobs, who oversees the program, said. “We want to build from that and give them a choice in what they have for dinner — show them pictures of every vegetable we have available that day, and let them pick, giving them the opportunity to have choices.”

Orangs are quite human like.  In fact,  Orangutan means “forest person” in both Indonesian and Malay.  They can make tools and construct shelters.  They don’t quite have the linguistic sophistication of humans, but maybe that’s just a difference of vocal chords.

I think this may eventually go well beyond pointing to pictures of fruit.  Once they’ve mastered that, the next step is to try some more abstract symbols.

We will know we have truly succeeded in communicating with another species when they can point to the right icons on the screen to say “Why are we in  this stupid cage?  Let us out, please.”  The day is coming.  It may be coming  sooner than you think.

(in an interesting side note, the oldest two Orangs didn’t really seem too interested in the iPad.  The younger ones, pardon the phrase, went ape.)