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Will We Ever Be Able to Talk With Our Pets?
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We’re all familiar with the scene, either straight from the source or through one of thousands of parodies: Lassie bounds up to the farmhand and starts yipping; the farmhand says, “What is it, Lassie?”; Lassie keeps yipping; and eventually the farmhand deciphers, from this undifferentiated noise, some extremely specific message re: someone being trapped in a well or burning house. This fantasy of dog-human communication has, a half-century on, still not been realized: We have no real way to know what our pets are after when they make their cute little noises. But might that be changing? Has the tide of technological advancement brought us any closer to the dream of talking to one’s pet, or at least knowing with greater precision whatever it is our pets are trying to communicate? For this week’s Giz Asks, we’ve talked to a number of experts to find out.