The Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University (TAU) have announced the four finalists for the first annual $100,000 prize from the Coller Dolittle Challenge for Interspecies Two-Way Communication. Annual prizes of $100,000 will be awarded until a team “cracks the code” of interspecies communication, winning the $10 million Grand Prize.

The four finalists have used cutting-edge technology and breath-taking ingenuity to decipher, interface, and mimic non-human organism communication, using a non-invasive approach to understand how these species communicate in unique depth and eliciting responses to signals sent by humans.

At a virtual event on May 15, the finalists will present their research to the scientific community and public at large before the expert judging panel breaks out to deliberate. The winner of the $100,000 prize will be announced live. The event will also feature a guest lecture by scientist Irene Pepperberg, “Studies on the Communicative and Cognitive Abilities of Grey Parrots.”

Professor Yossi Yovel of the Department of Zoology at TAU’s George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Chair of the Coller Dolittle Challenge said, “It’s an exciting time to be alive in the world of interspecies communication. This year’s finalists prove the power of AI to advance us towards a better understanding of non-human species.

“Whittling the list down to just four outstanding entries was a challenge, but the judging panel agreed that these offered the most promising evidence of understanding how animals communicate, bringing us ever closer to reaching our goal. I am sure that the list of proposals will only be longer in the future years of the competition.”

Jeremy Coller, Chairman and Founder of the Coller Foundation, said, “In some ways we’re a long way from our goal — we still can’t have a conversation with the animals who share our homes. But these finalists show that, in many other ways, we are tantalizingly close to cracking the code of interspecies communication. It feels like a breakthrough is just around the corner.

“From monkeys calling each other by name to cuttlefish waving and vibrating on cue, these projects demonstrate the amazingly diverse and complex ways in which living things communicate, and give a tantalizing glimpse of how we may one day hold meaningful dialogue with our fellow animals.”

The four teams were selected following a rigorous peer review of their research by the scientific committee represents a global effort, with researchers from the USA, Germany, France, and Israel. The groundbreaking research spans across various species, revealing key insights into the complexity of non-human communication:

• Dolphins’ Use of Complex Whistle for Communication: A collaborative team from the USA led by Laela Sayigh and Peter Tyack from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has been studying a resident bottlenose dolphin community in Sarasota, Florida. They have identified 20 distinct whistle types used by multiple dolphins for communication. Playback experiments suggest these signals may form a language-like communication system, with shared, context-specific meanings.
• AI-Powered Nightingale Communication: Daniela Vallentin of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence and her team based in Germany, along with Jan Clemens of the European Neuroscience Institute, have developed an AI model that can generate and analyze nightingale whistles, allowing for unprecedented interaction with the birds. The system breaks down nightingale songs into individual syllables, offering a deeper understanding of their structure and syntax.
• Cuttlefish and Visual-Tactile Signals: Sophie Cohen-Bodénès and Peter Neri, who began their research in École Normale Supérieure in Paris, have discovered a new communication method in cuttlefish involving arm movements. These “arm wave signs” are structured, expressive sequences that can be combined in specific patterns. Experiments indicate that cuttlefish respond to these displays and vibrations, suggesting they might communicate through both sight and touch.
• Marmoset Monkeys and Individual Naming: A team of researchers based in Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, led by David Omer, discovered that marmoset monkeys use specific vocalizations to identify each other by name. This finding suggests that vocal communication in non-human primates is more sophisticated than previously thought and may provide insights into the evolution of human language.

Prizes of $100,000 will be awarded to the most promising research team each year to support their work in developing scientifically rigorous models and algorithms for coherent communication with non-human organisms.

The Grand Prize of either a $10 million equity investment or a $500,000 cash prize will be awarded to the team that successfully “cracks the code” whereby an animal communicates independently without recognizing that it is communicating with humans.