Meow (Re)Mix
“The urge to converse with animals is age-old, long predating the time when smartphones became our best friends. Scientists have taught sign language to great apes, chatted with grey parrots and even tried to teach English to bottlenose dolphins. Pets — with which we share our homes but not a common language — are particularly tempting targets. My TikTok feed brims with videos of Bunny, a sheepadoodle who has learned to press sound buttons that play prerecorded phrases like ‘outside,’ ‘scritches” and ‘love you.’ MeowTalk is the product of a growing interest in enlisting additional intelligences — machine-learning algorithms — to decode animal communication.” NYT (Gift Article) Did My Cat Just Hit On Me? An Adventure in Pet Translation. (Let me save you the time, money, and effort. Your dog is saying I’m hungry. Your cat is saying f%*k you.)