Species all around us are communicating with one another. In modern societies, we largely ignore this fact. We also mostly assume that the communication can’t be that complex nor anything worth our while to understand. 

Contrary to this general fact, we do know that whales are communicating complex ideas around kinship and hunting.  We do know that dolphins have ways of communicating across vast distances using “technology” that our military is adapting for its own use. We know bats have radar. We have come to understand that birds have electro-magnetic sensors that allow them to have an “electronic map” of the earth and communicate that fact to each other. We know that ants can deceive their enemies by pretending to be friends, releasing chemical “transmissions”. 

With the advent of AI, perhaps the final and most powerful biomimetic vehicle for humans to adapt to this changing world, we are at the frontier of being able to understand our animal brethren.

For centuries, scientists have been interested in the biological origins of human language and its relations to other animal communication systems. Darwin, in his Descent of man, for instance, commented on babbling in songbirds, singing in gibbons and ‘the intimate connection between the brain, as it is now developed in us, and the faculty of speech’ [3, p. 88]. Since Darwin's time, though, much progress has been made in understanding the faculty of human language and its neurobiological underpinnings.

– The Royal Society

Join us at the Earth Codes Observatory as we make the latest VR and immersive art that elucidates animal codes available to the public. Perhaps this experience will change the way you work, or your children imagine their future.