They speak.
Other animals have language-like systems we are only now learning to read. Each species in this listening post is presented as something you can hear, sort, and try to speak back to. We do not know what they are saying. We are listening.
Built on public data from Project CETI, the Sharma Lab, and the Dominica Sperm Whale Project.
Species · live and forthcoming
Sperm whale
Physeter macrocephalus
live
A phonetic alphabet of clicks. Combinatorial, context-sensitive. 35 distinct codas in the recorded data.
Eastern Caribbean clan · Dominica · 2024
Honeybee
Apis mellifera
live
The waggle dance. Direction and distance to food encoded in an angle and a duration. A robot bee has spoken it and been understood.
European hives · von Frisch, then Berlin (Landgraf lab) · 1946
Egyptian fruit bat
Rousettus aegyptiacus
live
15,000 recorded arguments. A classifier could tell what they were shouting about — food, sleep, mating, or personal space — well above chance.
Israel · Yovel & Prat colonies · 2016
African elephant
Loxodonta africana
planned
Elephants call each other by name. Playback studies show individuals respond more strongly to their own name-like rumble than to others’.
Amboseli · Samburu · Kenya · 2024
Corvids
Corvidae
planned
Recursive call structure observed in carrion crows. Hints at hierarchical syntax.
Multiple study sites · 2023
Prairie dogs
Cynomys
planned
Alarm calls modify in real time to describe predator size, color, and shape. Functionally referential.
Arizona · long-term study · 2009
Each entry is added when the underlying science is solid enough to demonstrate, not when it is interesting enough to claim. The list will grow slowly.