The pursuit of artificial awareness may be humankind’s next moonshot. But it comes with a host of difficult questions.
Tag: Animal Cognition
The Animal Translators
Scientists are using machine learning to eavesdrop on naked mole rats, fruit bats, crows and whales — and to communicate back.
Did My Cat Just Hit On Me? An Adventure in Pet Translation
Entrepreneurs are aiming to put A.I.-powered pet translation tools into our pockets.
Why Scientists Have Spent Years Mapping This Creature’s Brain
An enormous new analysis of the wiring of the fruit fly brain is a milestone for the young field of modern connectomics, researchers say.
Australia’s Trash Parrots Invent New Skill in Suburbs
Sydney’s clever and adaptable sulfur-crested cockatoos learn how to pry open garbage bins by watching one another.
‘A Social Species’: How Kangaroos Communicate With People
Researchers say that kangaroos are the first wild animals to exhibit interspecies communication that is more commonly seen in animals that have evolved alongside humans.
Who Will Win the ‘Genius Dog Contest?’ Watch the Competition Begin
Scientists in Hungary are streaming experiments with dogs that know many words, featuring them in a contest of canine intelligence.
Horses and Reporting in the Field
After weeks of lockdown, getting in my car to cover a story was both a surreal and welcome experience.
Doing the Bump With the Belugas
An isolated corner of Manitoba is one of the few places left in the world where humans are the outsiders on display for the wildlife to observe.
Why Are These Foxes Tame? Maybe They Weren’t So Wild to Begin With
In a famous experiment, scientists bred Russian foxes without a fear of people. But the foxes’ ancestry raises new questions about when they became tame and what counts as domestication.