In the animated movie Up, a yellow, tail-wagging dog shows up wearing an electronic collar. The main character, a curious and cheerful 8-year-old boy named Russell, tells the dog to sit. The dog sits. Russell tells the dog to shake. The dog extends a paw. Russell then tells the dog to speak.
“Hi there,” says the dog.
To Russell’s amazement, the dog’s collar translates his doggy thoughts into actual human words. “My master made me this collar,” Dug the dog tells his new acquaintances. “He is a good and smart master, and he made me this collar so I may talk — SQUIRREL!”
This is a common piece of technology in stories — a translator that can decode animals’ barks, squeaks, meows, clicks and such, into human language.
Back here in the nonfiction world, anyone with a pet has probably wondered at some point what’s going on in that cute little animal head. Scientists can’t say. But there are reasons to think that an animal-human translator won’t stay a work of science fiction forever. “I think these things may be one day doable,” says Erich Jarvis. He’s a neurogeneticist at The Rockefeller University in New York City.
One day, pets may wear little devices like Dug’s col...
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