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I have one particular family member who is a rather quiet
sort. No matter my attempts to levy conversation, she'll just sit there quietly
and stare at me. Make no mistake, she lets me know when she's hungry or
displeased with a house guest, but she otherwise spends her days freeloading
and napping.
 At least it's a cute face; I'm clearly talking about my dog.
As our technology progresses to the point where it becomes
almost impossible to fathom the next breakthrough, our canines have been left
rather low-tech. Overall, that's a good thing. I feel as though nothing needs
to complicate to beautiful simplicity of the human-dog relationship. I often
say one of my favorite traits of my dog is actually her silence. If we start
trying to improve our pets too much, it won't be long until we end up with a
real-life CatDog.
Despite not having verbal speech, our dogs communicate and
interact with humans and other dogs in a very sophisticated way. Dogs are the
only other animal besides humans which understand pointing with the index
finger; not even chimpanzees understand the clue. When communicating primates
focus on the right side of another primate's face for emotional clues since
that side of the face is intrinsically linked to the right hemisphere of the
brain, and dogs are the only  non-primate to exhibit this behavior. Dogs and
humans are so compatible in their communication styles that DogTV, the first
television channel aimed at dog viewers, has become successful enough to expand
into new markets. Dogs communicate with each other by a series of body and
facial movements, odors, whines, yelps and growls. Seemingly, barks do very
little as a means of communication, but dogs are able to determine the size and
intent of another dog simply by listening to its growl - and furthermore no
dogs have been observed as 'lying' about their size.
 However, several sources believe that better animal-human
communication is on the verge of a breakthrough, and that decoding animal
language is shortly to follow. A team of inventors are currently working on a
system called FIDO, or 'facilitating interaction for dogs with occupations.'
The project is part of a recent trend of wearable computing, and the concept
team includes one of the inventors of Google Glass. The pup is outfitted with a
harness with four different odor sensors that the dog has learned. Each sensor
indicates a different
signal to the handler, who is wirelessly linked and nearby. The idea is that a
drug-sniffing dog can indicate different concepts to its handler, a
search-and-rescue dog can report different patient conditions, or your
household pal can tell you it's thirsty. While we're not quite to the point of Dug the dog, it's at
least a step in the right direction.
Previously, a Japanese company released Bowlingual. This
one-way communication device features a microphone transmitter attached to the
dog's collar which feeds a handheld computer its recording. The dog's bark is
compared to a library containing thousands of reference barks. The computer
provides the dog's emotional state, as well as the message behind the bark. However,
this product is strictly for "entertainment purposes only," so its
interpretations should not be heavily considered. One veterinarian notes that
BowLingual is untrustworthy and nonsensical.
 Con Slobodchikoff, an animal behaviorist
at Northern Arizona University, believes that the day when we decode the
language of dogs, and cats as well, is only a decade away. Slobodchikoff and
his research teams have decoded the complex language of prairie dogs. Their
research indicates the 'chatter' prairie dogs emit is a type of verbal language
which can even form short
sentences. Examine the video at right for a more in depth explanation by Slobodchikoff
himself. He believes that many other animals utilize verbal language as well,
but that our understanding of how they use it and what information they convey
is still developing. Slobodchikoff feels that humans have also largely ignored
the potential for verbal animal languages due to our species hubris.
It seems as though we're only a few innovations away from
fully realizing the communicative powers of our pets. In the case of my
Labrador retriever, I'm rather sure the ability to talk to me would result in
nonstop requests for food, 24/7. But at least I'd be able to shut the device off
for some peace and quiet, something quite unobtainable when there are other
family members around the house.
Resources
Pop Sci - FIDO would enable...
The Atlantic - Animal Behaviorist: We'll Soon Have Devices...
Wikipedia - Dog; BowLingual
PC Tech Mag - New devices let's dogs 'speak'...
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Re: Chatting with Canines
