If We Can’t Communicate With Animals, How Are We Going to Communicate With Aliens?

Part 1: The Terrestrial Challenge – Understanding Animal Communication

To speak of contacting an alien intelligence, we must first look to the “aliens” who already live among us. The quest to understand animal communication is a long and fascinating one, filled with breakthroughs, dead ends, and significant questions about our own place in the natural world. It provides the only template we have for deciphering a mind that is not human. While we share a planet, a genetic history, and a basic biological framework with the animals of Earth, the gap in understanding can still seem impossibly wide.

Defining “Communication” on Earth

Before we can ask if a parrot “talks” or a dolphin “thinks,” we have to define what communication even is. In biology, it’s broadly defined as any action or signal on the part of one organism that alters the probability of the behavior of another. This is a very wide net. It includes the lion’s roar, the ant’s chemical trail, and the peacock’s tail. But it also includes the bacteria that release chemicals to signal their neighbors to form a biofilm.

The line between a simple, involuntary “cue” and a purposeful, intentional “signal” is the first major hurdle. Is a mouse “communicating” fear when it freezes, or is it just an instinctive reaction that other mice happen to observe?

Signals vs. Cues: Intentional or Accidental?

A cue is a piece of information that an organism provides passively. A mosquito flying toward a human is cueing in on the carbon dioxide we exhale. We aren’t trying to tell the mosquito where we are; it’s an involuntary byproduct of our biology. The mosquito exploits this cue. In this case, no communication has happened.

A signal is different. It’s an act or structure that has evolved specifically to carry information and influence the behavior of others. The elaborate plumage of a male bird of paradise is a classic example. It’s metabolically expensive to grow and maintain those feathers. They serve no purpose except to signal fitness, health, and genetic quality to a potential mate. This is intentional, evolved communication. The male is sending a message, and the female is a specific receiver.

When we study animals, we are constantly trying to separate the cues from the signals. When a dog flattens its ears, is that an involuntary muscular reaction to fear (a cue), or is it a ritualized, evolved signal meant to tell another dog “I am not a threat”? In most social animals, it’s the latter. Simple actions have, over millennia, been shaped by evolution into a reliable signaling system. This distinction is vital, as it’s the first step toward finding a true “language.” An alien signal would, by definition, have to be an intentional signal, not a simple cue.

The Four Modalities: Visual, Auditory, Chemical, Tactile

Animal communication isn’t just one thing. It’s a suite of tools used in different contexts. Biologists typically categorize these signals into four main channels, or modalities.

1. Visual: This is the world of body language, color, and light. A wolf’s aggressive stance, a chimpanzee’ssubmissive gesture, the warning coloration of a poison-dart frog, and the complex, flickering light patterns of a firefly are all visual signals. This channel is fast, efficient, and works well in daylight over short to medium distances. Its weakness is that it requires a direct line of sight and is useless in the dark (unless you’re a firefly).
2. Auditory: Sound travels where light can’t. It can go around corners, through dense forests, and across vast stretches of open water. From the deep, infrasonic rumbles of an elephant to the complex, high-frequency clicks of a dolphin, auditory communication is central to many species. It’s a broadcast signal, meaning anyone within range can hear it, which can be both a strength (warning a whole flock of danger) and a weakness (alerting a predator).
3. Chemical: This is the most ancient form of communication. Life began communicating with chemicals. We often overlook this channel, but it’s arguably the most common on Earth. Moths release pheromonesto attract mates from miles away. Ants leave chemical trails (also pheromones) to guide their nestmates to food. A dog sniffing a fire hydrant is reading a complex “message board” of chemical signals left by other dogs. This channel is slow to transmit but can be very long-lasting.
4. Tactile: Communication through touch is vital for social bonding. Primates grooming each other, catsrubbing against their owners, and elephants twining their trunks are all using tactile signals. This is the most intimate form of communication, requiring close physical proximity. It’s essential for reinforcing social hierarchies, comforting offspring, and signaling intentions during mating or play.

Most animals use a “cocktail” of these modalities, often simultaneously, to create a rich, context-dependent message.

The Concept of “Language” vs. “Communication”

This is the most contentious part of the field. All animals communicate. But do any animals, besides humans, use language?

This isn’t just semantics. Most linguists and cognitive scientists reserve the word “language” for a communication system with a few specific, powerful properties. These include:

• Displacement: The ability to communicate about things that are not right here, right now. A person can talk about what they had for breakfast yesterday, or what they plan to do next summer, or a hypothetical unicorn.
• Arbitrariness: The signals (words) are arbitrary. The sound “dog” has no physical connection to the furry, four-legged creature. We’ve just all agreed that’s what it means. In contrast, a dog’s growl is not arbitrary; it’s physically linked to the aggression it represents.
• Syntax: This is the big one. Language has rules of grammar. We combine a limited set of words in specific ways to create a limitless number of new, meaningful sentences. “Dog bites man” and “Man bites dog” use the same words, but the syntax completely changes the meaning.

A vervet monkey’s alarm call is sophisticated communication. They have different calls for “leopard,” “eagle,” and “snake.” This is functionally semantic; the calls refer to specific things in the world. But it’s not language. They can’t combine those calls to mean “I saw a leopard yesterday.” They are stuck in the present moment, reacting to a stimulus.

The search for true, human-like language in animals is a search for these properties. So far, no animal communication system studied in the wild has demonstrated all of them.

Auditory Channels: The Sounds of Life

When we think of communication, we often think of sound. It’s our primary channel. It’s no surprise that some of the most intense research has focused on species with complex vocalizations.

Vocalizations in Mammals

Primates and cetaceans (whales and dolphins) are the most-studied vocal mammals. Chimpanzee groups have a rich repertoire of hoots, grunts, and screams that convey emotion, social status, and immediate environmental information (like finding food).

Dolphins are even more complex. They use a combination of whistles and high-frequency clicks. The clicks are part of their echolocation, a sensory system. But their whistles appear to be purely social. Researchers have found that individual bottlenose dolphins develop a “signature whistle” in their first year of life, which is essentially a name. They use it to broadcast their identity, and other dolphins can mimic a dolphin’s signature whistle to call them. This is a remarkable, and rare, example of vocal labeling in the animal kingdom.

Whales, particularly humpback whales, produce “song.” These are not just random sounds; they are long, complex, and highly structured. Males in a single population will all sing the same song in a given season, and that song will gradually evolve over time. It’s a striking example of cultural transmission in a non-human species. We just don’t know what it means.

Birdsong: Syntax and Dialects

Birds are, in many ways, the true vocal masters. Many songbirds learn their songs, just as humans learn language. A young bird must hear its father’s song and then practice, refining its “babble” into a perfect copy.

What’s more, birdsong shows evidence of simple syntax. Some species combine a limited set of “notes” or “syllables” into “phrases.” The order matters. They might have one phrase for “I am a male” and another for “this is my territory,” but they can also combine them in specific, rule-governed ways. Researchers have even found that some birds, like the Japanese tit, have calls that seem to function like “verbs” and “nouns,” combining a “danger” call with a “come here” call to create a specific “flee to safety” instruction.

Like humans, bird populations also have regional dialects. A white-crowned sparrow from one part of California will have a slightly different “accent” from one just a few hundred miles away. This shows that their song is learned, not just hard-wired.

Insect and Amphibian Calls

Even the seemingly simple calls of insects and frogs are complex communication. A cricket’s chirp is a beacon, broadcasting its species, sex, location, and even its relative size and health to any female within earshot. Frogs in a crowded pond have a similar problem. They have to “time” their calls to fit into the gaps left by other males, creating a complex, rhythmic chorus to avoid having their own signal jammed.

Visual Channels: A World of Signals

For many animals, sight is the primary sense. Their communication is a silent, visual dance of posture, color, and light.

Body Language and Posture

Anyone who has lived with a dog or cat understands visual communication. A dog’s tail wag, ear position, and body posture create a nuanced gradient of meaning, from “I am playful” to “I am fearful” to “I am about to attack.” Wolves in a pack use this visual language constantly to maintain their complex social hierarchy without resorting to actual violence. A submissive wolf will lower its body, tuck its tail, and avert its gaze, a clear signal that it yields to the dominant animal.

Primates have an even more elaborate system. Because they have facial muscles similar to our own, they use expressions. A chimpanzee’s “grin” is not a sign of happiness; it’s a “fear grimace,” a sign of submission. Their gestures, like holding out a hand to beg for food or grooming a high-ranking ally, are all part of a visual social toolkit.

Color and Bioluminescence

In the animal world, color is communication. A bright, flashy color can be a warning (aposematism), as seen in wasps and poisonous snakes. It says, “I am dangerous, do not eat me.” It can also be an advertisement, like the peacock’s tail.

But perhaps the most “alien” visual communicators on Earth are the cephalopods: octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish. They are masters of a light-based language. Their skin contains millions of tiny pigment-filled cells called chromatophores, which they can control with their nervous system. A cuttlefish can change its entire body’s color and pattern in less than a second. It can display stripes on one side to threaten a rival male, while simultaneously showing a courting pattern to a female on its other side. They can create passing “clouds” of color that ripple across their skin, a “language” we’ve only just begun to observe, let alone understand.

In the deep ocean, where sunlight never reaches, visual communication is all about bioluminescence. Anglerfish use a glowing lure to attract prey, but many other creatures use light to talk to each other, signaling for mates or warning off predators in the total darkness.

Ritualistic Displays

Many visual signals are combined into ritualistic displays. The complex, synchronized dances of grebes or the bizarre, stage-building and-decorating behavior of the bowerbird are all elaborate, multi-part visual messages. They aren’t just saying “I’m here”; they’re saying “I am a high-quality, intelligent, and healthy partner, and I have put a lot of effort into proving it.”

Chemical and Tactile Channels: The Unseen Senses

We are a visual and auditory species, so we tend to ignore the other channels. But for most of the animal kingdom, chemical and tactile signals are the most important.

Pheromones: The Chemical Internet

Pheromones are chemical signals that trigger a social response in members of the same species. This is the language of insects. An ant colony is not run by a king or queen giving orders. It’s run by a decentralized “internet” of chemical trails. An ant finds food and lays down a pheromone trail. The more ants that follow it, the stronger the trail becomes, creating a positive feedback loop that efficiently recruits the entire colony to the food source. They have other pheromones for “danger,” “I am a nestmate,” and “I am dead.”

Mammals use them too. A female moth can attract a male from miles away with a single plume of pheromones. A male deer during the rut will wallow in its own urine, a potent chemical signal of its readiness to mate. This world of chemical communication is almost completely closed to us, as our sense of smell is so laughably poor in comparison.

Scent Marking and Territory

Scent marking is a form of chemical “graffiti.” A wolf or a tiger that patrols its territory is leaving a series of scent marks (via urine, feces, or specialized glands) that declare “This is mine.” These signals are durable; they can last for days or weeks, allowing animals to communicate even when they aren’t in the same place at the same time. This is a form of “displacement” in time.

Touch and Social Bonding

Finally, touch is the language of social relationships. In primate troops, an immense amount of time is spent grooming. This isn’t just about hygiene; it’s the social glue of the group. Grooming an ally reinforces their bond, calms them down (it lowers the heart rate), and signals loyalty. A mother lion licking her cub is not just cleaning it; she’s communicating security and care. This tactile channel is essential for the healthy development of social animals, including humans.

Case Studies in Animal Intelligence

Some species stand out as being particularly “intelligent” or having “complex” communication, challenging our assumptions. These are the species that give us the best practice for thinking about non-human minds.

The Great Apes

Because they are our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans have been the focus of intense “language” studies. Researchers in the mid-20th century famously tried to teach chimps to speak, which failed because their vocal anatomy is different. But a new approach yielded stunning results: teaching them American Sign Language (ASL) or to use symbolic keyboards.

Apes like Washoe the chimpanzee and Koko the gorilla learned hundreds of signs. They could string them together, like “You me go out hurry” or “Gimme apple.” Koko famously signed “Sad” when her pet kitten died. This suggested a deep emotional and cognitive life.

However, this research is also controversial. Critics argued that the apes weren’t really using language with syntax, but were mostly just performing complex mimicry to get a reward, or that the human trainers were over-interpreting the signs. It’s likely the truth is somewhere in the middle. The apes demonstrated a clear ability for symbolic representation, but they never showed the runaway, creative generativity of a human child learning to speak.

Cetaceans

Dolphins and whales have brains that are, in some cases, larger and more complexly folded than our own. Their social lives are intricate. Killer whale (orca) “pods” have complex, matrilineal societies, and different pods have different “cultures.” They have unique hunting strategies (like washing seals off ice floes) and unique vocal “dialects” that they pass down from mother to daughter.

Sperm whales are another focus. They communicate using patterns of clicks called “codas.” Researchers using AI have begun to find that these codas are not random. They seem to have a “phonetic” structure, where a few basic click patterns are combined in different ways, much like human letters or syllables. We are on the verge of discovering a “sperm whale alphabet,” though we are still a long way from understanding the “words.”

Cephalopods

The octopus is the closest we may get to a truly “alien” intelligence on Earth. They are mollusks, related to clams and snails. Their last common ancestor with humans was a microscopic worm over 600 million years old. They evolved their large brains and high intelligence on a completely separate path.

An octopus’s nervous system is decentralized. Two-thirds of its neurons are in its arms, not its brain. Each arm can, in a sense, “think” for itself. Their communication, as discussed, is a near-instantaneous flash of color and texture on their skin. They are intelligent enough to solve complex puzzles, open jars, and recognize individual human faces. Studying them is like studying an “N of 1” experiment in how intelligence can evolve.

Corvids and Parrots

Birds, specifically corvids (crows, ravens, jays) and parrots, have shown cognitive abilities that rival primates. Their brains are structured differently, but they achieve similar results (a case of convergent evolution).

Crows can solve complex, multi-step puzzles. They understand water displacement. They remember human faces that have wronged them and can pass that information on to other crows. Ravens can plan for the future, selecting a tool they will need to use later.

Parrots, like the famous African Grey “Alex”, have demonstrated a grasp of abstract concepts. Alex could identify colors, shapes, and materials. He could answer the question “How many red squares?” He wasn’t just mimicking; he seemed to understand the questions.

The Limits of Our Understanding

After all this research, the primary lesson is one of humility. We are very, very bad at understanding non-human minds. We are trapped in our own, and we face two major barriers.

Anthropomorphism: The Human Trap

Anthropomorphism is the tendency to project human thoughts, feelings, and motivations onto animals. We do it all the time. “My dog is ‘guilty’ because he won’t look at me.” “That chimp is ‘smiling’ at me.”

In reality, the dog’s “guilty” look is a well-evolved submissive display that’s highly effective at defusing a more dominant animal’s (your) anger. The chimp’s “smile” is a fear grimace. While it’s a natural human tendency, anthropomorphism is the enemy of objective science. It makes us see what we want to see, not what is actually there.

When deciphering animal communication, researchers must constantly fight this bias. We have to assume, as a starting point, that the animal is not like us. We have to build our case from data and observation, not from assumptions about their internal state. This will be an even greater challenge with a hypothetical alien.

Deciphering Complexity: Is it just stimulus-response?

The second major hurdle is the “stimulus-response” problem. For a long time, many scientists believed animals were just complex automatons. A stimulus (a red dot) appears, and the animal performs a hard-wired response (pecking at it).

Modern cognitive science has shown this is wrong, and that animals have rich inner lives. But the problem of proof remains. How do we prove that a bird’s song is a voluntary, intentional, creative act, and not just a complex “program” run by its hormones and the time of day? How do we prove the dolphin’s whistle is a “name” and not just a “this is me” beacon?

The challenge is to design experiments that can separate a simple, hard-wired behavior from a flexible, cognitive, intentional one.

The “Umwelt”: Experiencing Different Realities

This is the most fundamental problem. The 19th-century German biologist Jakob von Uexküll coined the term Umwelt to describe the unique sensory world of a species. We humans are primarily visual. A dog’s Umwelt is overwhelmingly olfactory (smell). A bat’s Umwelt is acoustic echolocation. A bee’s Umwelt includes ultraviolet light patterns on flowers that are invisible to us.

We are not just experiencing the same world with different tools. We are, in a very real sense, living in different worlds. A dolphin “sees” with sound in a way we can’t even imagine. It can “see” the internal structure of a fish, or the baby inside a pregnant human.

How do you communicate with a being whose entire concept of “here” or “object” or “self” is based on a sense you don’t have? We share 98.8% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and we still struggle to bridge the gap of Umwelt. This is the ultimate lesson animals teach us, and it’s a objectiveing one as we look to the stars.

Part 2: The Speculative Frontier – Envisioning Alien Communication

When we turn from animals to aliens, we leave the world of data and enter the world of pure speculation. We have no “N of 1” experiment. We have an “N of 0.” Our only data point is ourselves, and the animals we study. Everything we imagine about extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) is, by definition, a projection.

This speculation isn’t useless. It’s a powerful tool for testing the limits of our own assumptions. By imagining how an alien might communicate, we are forced to confront the hidden biases in our own “Earth-centric” view of life and intelligence.

Why Aliens Would Need to Communicate

We can start with a single, safe assumption: if an alien species has developed technology (like a radio transmitter), it must be a communicating species. Why?

The Evolutionary Drivers

On Earth, complex cooperation is the key to complex achievements. A single ant is an idiot. An ant colony is a “superorganism” that can build vast cities, farm fungi, and wage war. This is achieved through communication.

Humans didn’t get to the top of the food chain because we are the strongest or fastest. We got there because of language. Language allows us to cooperate, to pass knowledge from one generation to the next (cumulative culture), and to coordinate our actions in large, flexible groups.

It’s very difficult to imagine a species building a radio telescope without some equivalent. You can’t have science, engineering, or technology without a way to share abstract information, plan, and coordinate. An intelligent alien is almost certainly a social alien.

Communication as a Sign of Technology

This leads to the SETI paradox. The only aliens we can detect are the ones who are communicating in a way we can intercept. A civilization of super-intelligent, silent, solitary philosophers will be invisible to us. A civilization that communicates through a method we can’t even conceive of will also be invisible.

The “Great Filter” concept in astrobiology speculates on the hurdles life must overcome. One of them might be the development of communication and, later, technology. If a species builds a radio transmitter, it has, by definition, a need to transmit information. This implies a society, a desire to share, and a high level of abstraction.

Solitary vs. Social Species

Could a solitary species become intelligent? On Earth, the most intelligent animals (primates, cetaceans, corvids, octopuses) are all highly social… with the exception of the octopus.

The octopus is the great “what if.” It’s a solitary hunter. Its intelligence is a tool for problem-solving, camouflage, and hunting, not for social interaction. An octopus civilization is hard to imagine. They are not known to cooperate (they are often cannibalistic) and they don’t pass down knowledge (the mother dies protecting her eggs, and the new generation has no contact with her).

If a solitary intelligence did evolve, its “communication” might look very different. It might be purely a way to manipulate its environment, not to share with peers. A message from such a in

telligence might not be a “hello,” but just a byproduct of its own, lonely engineering.

Beyond the Senses: Speculating on Alien Modalities

This is where the speculation gets wild, and where we must break free from our Umwelt. We assume aliens will use sound or light, because that’s what we use. But the environment they evolve in will determine their senses, and their senses will determine their communication.

Reimagining the Familiar

Even the “familiar” senses could be used in alien ways.

• Visual: Imagine a species evolving on a planet orbiting a red dwarf star. Their “visible” spectrum would be shifted far into the infrared. They might communicate using patterns of heat. Their “language” would be a flickering dance of warm and cold patches on their bodies.
• Auditory: On a planet with a very dense atmosphere, sound would travel much farther and faster. A species might evolve to use incredibly complex, long-distance sound “songs,” far more data-rich than a whale’s. On a planet with a thin atmosphere, sound would be useless, and this modality would never develop.
• Chemical: We dismissed chemical communication as “primitive.” But what about a species that evolved it to a high art? Imagine a “language” based on releasing complex, “designed” molecules. A single “word” could be a string of proteins, and a “sentence” could be a message that contains as much data as a book, which the receiver “smells” and decodes.

The Impact of Environment: Gas Giants vs. Water Worlds

Let’s take two common science-fiction tropes.

• Water World: An intelligent species evolves in a global ocean, like a dolphin. They might use a combination of sound (which travels wonderfully in water) and bioluminescence (for visual signals in the dark depths).
• Gas Giant: This is harder. Could life evolve in the “sky” of a gas giant like Jupiter? If so, what would it be? Perhaps a vast, living “cloud” or “mat” of organisms. How would it communicate? Perhaps through massive, slow changes in its electrical field, or by releasing patterns of chemicals into the atmosphere. The “conversation” might take place over decades.

Exotic Channels: Magnetic Fields, Neutrinos, Gravitational Waves?

This is the most speculative. What if an ETI doesnV’t use the familiar forces?

• Magnetic Fields: Some animals on Earth (like migratory birds and sea turtles) can sense the Earth’s magnetic field for navigation. What if a species evolved to control it? Their “language” could be a series of complex magnetic pulses, completely undetectable to us without specialized equipment.
• Neutrinos: Neutrinos are subatomic particles that pass through almost all matter. They are incredibly difficult to detect. A very advanced civilization might, in theory, use a modulated neutrino beam to communicate. It would be the perfect, private message: it would pass through planets and stars, and only a receiver with equally advanced technology could ever detect it.
• Non-Biological Communication: We are already on the verge of creating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). What if the first “alien” we meet is not biological? What if biological life is just a short-lived “boot-loader” for a more durable machine intelligence? A civilization of “bots” might communicate at the speed of light, sharing data packets. Their “language” would be pure, compressed information, with no biological “fluff” like emotion or ambiguity.

The Problem of “Language”

We’re stuck on the idea of “language” because of our own experience. We assume aliens will have “words” and “sentences.” This is almost certainly wrong.

Would Aliens Have Syntax?

Our syntax (subject-verb-object, etc.) is a product of our brains, which evolved to describe events in our specific Umwelt (“the lion is chasing the man”). An alien Umwelt would produce a different kind of brain, and a different kind of “logic.”

Perhaps an alien “language” isn’t linear. A human sentence has a beginning, middle, and end. What if an alien communicates “holistically”? A cuttlefish’s visual display is like this. It’s not “I am… angry… at… you.” It’s one, single, instantaneous flash of “I-am-angry-at-you.” A more advanced version could be a “thought-image” or a “data-packet” that communicates an entire concept at once.

The Universal Language Fallacy (Math, physics)

A common idea is that “math is the universal language.” We’ll broadcast prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7, 11…) or the value of Pi. This is a good beacon. It signals “we are intelligent, we understand patterns.”

But it’s a terrible language. Knowing that 1+1=2 is the start of a conversation, not the conversation itself. It’s a way to establish a shared framework. But how do you get from “Pi” to “We are lonely”? How do you get from the Pythagorean theorem to “What is your ethical system?”

The problem is “symbol grounding.” We know what “1” means because we can hold up one finger. We know what “2” means because we can see two trees. An alien might not have fingers. It might not perceive “trees” as separate objects, but as partof a continuous “forest-field.” Our math is grounded in our perception of the world. Theirs will be grounded in theirs.

Art, Music, and Emotion as Potential Channels

Maybe the first “message” won’t be logical. Maybe it will be aesthetic. A humpback whale’s song is complex, structured, and mathematical, but it also just is. We can analyze it, but we can also just experience it.

Perhaps a message from an ETI won’t be a riddle to be “solved,” but a pattern to be “felt.” It might be an attempt to convey their subjective experience, their “what it is like to be” them. This is what our art does. A sad song doesn’t state “I am sad”; it conveys sadness.

This is a disquieting thought for scientists, because it’s not falsifiable. It’s not something you can easily “decode.”

SETI: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is the formal, scientific attempt to move from “N of 0” to “N of 1.” It’s the only part of this field that isn’t pure speculation.

Listening for Signals: Radio and Optical SETI

For most of its history, SETI has been “radio SETI.” This is based on a simple, logical assumption. The “water hole” of the radio spectrum (a quiet band between the frequencies of hydrogen and hydroxyl molecules) is a perfect, “obvious” place to send a signal. It’s a quiet neighborhood in the noisy city of the galaxy. So, SETI scientists use massive radio telescopes to “listen” to nearby star systems, “eavesdropping” for any signal that is not natural.

A “natural” signal (from a pulsar, for example) is noisy and repetitive. An “artificial” signal would be narrow-band. It would be a single, sharp spike on the spectrum. It would be an “order” in the “chaos.”

More recently, “Optical SETI” has gained traction. The idea is that a civilization might use powerful lasers to send pulsed signals. These would be short, bright flashes of light that would, to a telescope, look very different from a star.

The “Wow!” Signal and Its Legacy

In 1977, a SETI radio telescope at Ohio State University picked up a signal. The astronomer on duty, Jerry Ehman, saw the printout. It was a 72-second-long, extremely strong, narrow-band signal, coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It was exactly what they were looking for. In the margin of the printout, he famously wrote “Wow!”

And then it was gone. It never repeated. We have pointed our telescopes back at that patch of sky countless times and heard nothing. We still have no good natural explanation for the Wow! signal. It is the most tantalizing, and most frustrating, “maybe” in the history of science. It’s a perfect example of the problem: a single, non-repeating, context-free “signal” is indistinguishable from a fluke.

The Problem of Detection: What are we even looking for?

This is the great problem SETI faces. It’s looking for “us.” It’s assuming that aliens will use radio, or lasers, because we use radio and lasers. This is a necessary and practical assumption – you can only search for things you know how to search for – but it’s also a limiting one.

What if a civilization’s “communication” is the byproduct of its astro-engineering? What if a “Dyson Sphere” (a hypothetical megastructure that encloses a star to capture all its energy) is the “signal”? We should be looking for “techno-signatures,” not just “messages.” This could be an atmosphere full of industrial pollutants, or a “city light” pattern on a dark planet.

Active SETI: The Debate Over Messaging

So far, we’ve mostly been listening. But “Active SETI,” also known as Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), is the idea that we should be sending messages. This is highly controversial.

We have sent a few. The “Arecibo Message” in 1974 was a simple pictogram, broadcast toward a distant star cluster. It contained our number system, the atomic numbers of our key elements, a picture of our DNA, a stick figure of a human, and a map of our solar system.

The “pro” side argues: The universe is vast. We have to shout to be heard. It’s our best chance of making contact.

The “con” side argues: Are you crazy? It’s like shouting in a dark, unknown jungle. We have no idea what’s out there. The first rule of contact with a potentially more advanced civilization is: “Don’t.” We might be alerting beings who are not friendly.

This debate is, in itself, a form of communication. It’s us, as a species, trying to decide who we are and what our policy is toward the rest of the universe.

Part 3: The Core Comparison – Bridging Two Worlds

We have two distinct challenges. The first, animal communication, is a “local” problem. It’s a puzzle. We have all the pieces: the animals, their environment, their DNA, their brains. We just need to figure out how to put them together.

The second, alien communication, is a “cosmic” problem. It’s a meta-puzzle. We don’t have any pieces. We are trying to figure out what the pieces might even look like.

What can the first challenge teach us about the second?

The Common Ground: What Animals Teach Us

Studying animals is our “practice mode” for SETI. It’s where we can test our methods and, more importantly, our assumptions.

Shared Biology: The Anchor of Interspecies Communication

The single most important difference is this: we share a common ancestor with every living thing on Earth. We are all “family.” We all use DNA and RNA. We all use proteins. We all live in a carbon-and-water-based environment. We all evolved under the same sun, on the same gravity well.

This shared biology gives us an “anchor.” When we study a chimp, we can look at its brain and see a structure that is a variation on our own. We can test its blood and find the same hormones – cortisol for stress, oxytocin for bonding. This gives us a ground truth for our interpretations.

We have no such anchor with an alien. An ETI from a different biosphere would have no shared biology. We might share… the laws of physics? The periodic table? That’s it. It’s the “N of 1” problem again. Our entire understanding of “life” and “intelligence” is based on a single example.

Learning to Listen: Lessons from Dolphin and Primate Research

The history of animal “language” research is a masterclass in failure and humility. The first attempts were clumsy, arrogant, and anthropocentric. We tried to teach them our language. “Speak, Flipper!” “Sign, Washoe!”

The new, modern approach is the opposite. It’s not about teaching; it’s about listening. Researchers like Denise Herzing have spent decades just observing wild dolphins, letting the dolphins get used to them. They are building a catalog of behaviors and sounds, using AI to find patterns before they assign any meaning.

This is the lesson for SETI. Our first contact will not be a conversation. It will be a long, long period of listening. If we ever get a “signal,” our first response should be… nothing. We should just listen, maybe for centuries. We must resist the urge to “talk” and instead just try to gather data, to find the patterns, before we leap to any conclusions.

Empathy and Theory of Mind

To communicate with another being, you need a “Theory of Mind.” This is the ability to understand that the other being is a being. It has a mind of its own. It has beliefs, desires, and intentions that are separate from yours.

We are just beginning to do this with animals. We are moving from seeing them as “things” to seeing them as “beings.” The act of trying to communicate with a chimp, and seeing it communicate back, is a powerful exercise in empathy. It forces us to de-center ourselves.

This is the ultimate training. Can we, as a species, develop a “Theory of Mind” for a being that is not carbon-based? A being that might be a swarm-mind? A being that might be a planet-sized fungus? A being that might be a 500-year-old machine? Our work with animals is the first, tiny step on that philosophical ladder.

The Great Divide: Why Aliens are Fundamentally Different

For all the useful lessons, the differences are more stark than the similarities.

The “N of 1” Problem (Earth is our only data point)

This cannot be overstated. We only know one way for life to be. We only know one way for intelligence to evolve. We assume life needs water. We assume it’s based on carbon. We assume it has a “body” and “senses” and “lives” and “dies.”

Every one of these could be wrong. An alien intelligence is a true “unknown unknown.” It is “other” in a way an octopus, for all its strangeness, is not. The octopus is still our cousin.

Divergent Evolution: No Shared Ancestry

This lack of shared ancestry means we have no shared context. A chimp’s “threat” display (showing teeth) is something we can instinctively understand, because our own primate ancestors had similar displays. We share the context of “predator,” “danger,” “hierarchy.”

An alien signal has no context. None. We call it the “Symbol Grounding Problem.” If an alien sends us a “picture,” how do we know it’s a picture? How do we know which way is “up”? How do we know it’s a “thing” and not “energy”? A symbol (like the word “tree”) only has meaning because it is “grounded” in a shared reality (the physical object we both agree to call a tree).

With an alien, there is no shared reality. We would have to build one from scratch, using only math and physics as our first bricks.

The Assumption of Senses (What if they don’t see or hear?)

We are sensory beings. We have five (or more) main senses. What if an ETI doesn’t? What if it’s a “solipsist” intelligence? A species that evolved in a completely dark, featureless, underground ocean. It might not have “senses” at all. It might be a purely thinking being, existing only in a mathematical or philosophical state.

Or, more likely, it has senses we can’t comprehend. We can’t ask a bat “what is it like to be a bat?” We really can’t ask a magnetic-pulse-using-gas-giant-cloud “what is it like to be you?”

The Gulf of Consciousness (What is “thought”?)

This is the final, philosophical chasm. We don’t even know what our own consciousness is. We have no idea if a dog or an octopus is “conscious” in the same way we are. We assume they are, but we can’t prove it.

The “thought” of an alien might be so different as to be unrecognizable. Our “thought” is a linear, internal monologue. What if an alien “thought” is a parallel, distributed process, like a flock of birds? What if “thought” for a hive-mind species is just a chemical gradient?

We are looking for a “person.” We might find a “process.” This is the great fear of SETI. What if we get a signal, and it’s not a message? What if it’s just… an equation? An algorithm? The “operating system” of a machine-mind, which it broadcasts for its own reasons? We might “receive” a “message” and not even have the concept of what a “message” is to that being.

Tools and Techniques: A Comparative Toolkit

How we study these two groups shows the difference in the problems.

Our Toolkit for Animals

For animals, our toolkit is interactive and context-rich.

• Observation: We can watch them in their environment. We see what they do after they “talk.” This gives us context.
• Audio/Video: We use spectrograms to visualize birdsong. We use high-speed cameras to catch the flick of a cuttlefish’s chromatophores.
• Biometrics: We can put a heart-rate monitor on a chimp. We can take a blood sample. We can test its DNA.
• AI: We can feed thousands of hours of sperm whale “codas” into a machine-learning algorithm to find patterns we would miss.
• Interactive Experiments: We can test our hypotheses. We can play a “leopard” call and see if the vervet monkeys run up the trees. If we’re right, they will. This immediate feedback loop is our most powerful tool.

Our Toolkit for Aliens

For aliens, our toolkit is passive and context-free.

• Telescopes: We have radio telescopes to listen. We have optical telescopes to look for “techno-signatures.”
• Cryptography: If we get a signal, our first “decoders” won’t be biologists. They’ll be cryptographers and linguists, treating it like an unbreakable code.
• Mathematics: We’ll be looking for non-random patterns: prime numbers, mathematical constants, anything that screams “not nature.”
• Patience: Our “feedback loop” is not immediate. If we send a message to the nearest star system (Proxima Centauri), it will take 4.24 years for the message to get there, and 4.24 years for a reply to come back. That’s an 8.5-year “hello.” For most stars, we’re talking about centuries or millennia.

Here’s a simple comparison of the two challenges:

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Deciphering Both

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the one tool that applies to both problems in a powerful new way. For animals, AI is already finding patterns in whale song and prairie dog “chatter” that humans missed. It can process vast datasets without the bias of a human ear.

For aliens, AI would be our first and best “translator.” If we get a complex signal, a machine-learning algorithm would be tasked with finding the “grammar,” the “syntax,” the hidden rules. It would be a pure pattern-matching problem, divorced from all the human “linguistic” baggage. It’s possible an AI could “understand” an alien language, and even “talk” to it, before any human ever could.

The “Message” vs. The “Medium”

What is the content we’re trying to get? This is also radically different.

Animal messages: Immediate, environmental, biological

The vast majority of animal communication is “here and now.”

• “I am here.” (Territorial song)
• “Mate with me.” (Courtship display)
• “Danger!” (Alarm call)
• “This is food.” (Ant trail)
• “I submit.” (Submissive posture)

It’s all tied to immediate biological needs: survival, reproduction, and social status. They are not discussing philosophy. They are not, as far as we know, recounting their history. They are anchored in the present. The challenge is translating these immediate, contextual signals.

Alien messages: Abstract, technological, philosophical

A message from an ETI, by the very fact that it crossed space, is the opposite. It is, by definition, not about the “here and now.” It is a message of displacement. It is an attempt to communicate something abstract.

The “content” would be:

• “We exist.” (The signal itself)
• “This is our math.” (A prime number sequence)
• “This is our physics.” (The hydrogen spectrum)
• “This is our world.” (A map, like the Arecibo message)

The first message would be a “Rosetta Stone.” It would be an attempt to build a shared dictionary. The challenge is not just “what are they saying” but “what abstract concepts are they trying to ground?”

The Risk of Misinterpretation (A comparison)

With animals, the risk of misinterpretation is high, but the stakes are relatively low. If we think a chimp’s “grin” is a “smile,” we are wrong, but the chimp just continues its life. We have misinterpreted its internal state.

With aliens, the risk of misinterpretation is total, and the stakes are existential. What if we receive a “message”? We spend 50 years “decoding” it. It seems to be a “welcome,” an “encyclopedia,” a “map to paradise.” What if it’s a virus? A “malware” for our AI systems? What if it’s a “lure”? What if it’s not a “message” at all, but a “threat,” and our “hello” back is seen as an act of aggression?

The “context-free” nature of the alien signal makes it a “Rorschach test.” We will see in it whatever we, as a species, are most prepared to see: a savior, a friend, or a monster.

Part 4: Building the “Decoder Ring”

How do we actually go about “decoding” a message, whether from a whale or a star? The process is very different.

Xenolinguistics: The Science of Alien Language

Xenolinguistics is a “science” with no subject. It’s a theoretical field. But it has established some useful thought experiments.

Is it a “Language” at all?

This is the first question. A pulsar signal is complex, but it’s not a “language.” It’s a natural phenomenon. The first test for any ETI signal is to prove it is not natural. The “Wow!” signal passed this test (it was narrow-band), but failed the next one: it didn’t repeat.

A signal must be complex, but also structured. It can’t be too random, or it’s just noise. It also can’t be too simple, or it’s just a pulsar. It has to be in that “magic” middle-ground of “complexity with pattern.”

Finding Patterns: The Role of Linguistics and Cryptography

Let’s say we get a signal: “A-B-A-A-B-B-A-A-A-B-B-B…”

A linguist and a cryptographer would attack this.

1. Frequency Analysis: How often does “A” appear? How often does “B” appear?
2. Structure: Do “A”s always come in increasing numbers? Does a “B” always follow an “A”?
3. Entropy: Is the message “rich” in information, or is it “flat” and repetitive? A human language has a very specific “entropy” (a measure of its predictability).

This is how we “break” a code. We are looking for the “rules,” the “grammar,” that generates the message. This is what AI is so good at.

The “Rosetta Stone” Problem: Finding a Key

In 1799, French soldiers in Egypt found the Rosetta Stone. It had the same text in three scripts: Hieroglyphics, Demotic, and Greek. Since scholars could read Greek, they had a “key.” It was the ultimate “decoder ring.”

For an ETI signal, we don’t have a “Greek” translation. An alien might have to give us one. The Arecibo message was an attempt to be a Rosetta Stone. It showed “1” and then showed a “binary” symbol for “1.” It showed a “human” and then showed a symbol for “human.”

A first message would almost have to be a “picture book.” It would have to provide its own key. It might start with a simple “pulse-pulse-pause-pulse-pulse” (2 + 2) and then show a “pulse-pulse-pulse-pulse” (4). It would be teaching us its “symbol for 4.” This is the “building a dictionary” phase.

The Animal “Decoder Ring”

We have a different “key” for animals: their behavior.

Using AI to Translate Animal Signals

This is a very active field. Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) is a massive project to use AI to understand sperm whale communication. They are not just “listening.” They are deploying terabytes of data storage, multiple “listening” buoys, and drones to tag and follow the whales.

Their “key” is context. The AI is not just getting the “clicks.” It’s getting:

• Who is “talking”? (From the tag)
• Who is “near” them?
• What are they doing? (Diving, hunting, socializing)
• What happened next?

The AI’s job is to correlate “click pattern X” with “behavior Y.” It’s “grounding” the “coda” in the “real-world action.” This is our Rosetta Stone for animals.

The Prairie Dog “Language” Example

A researcher named Con Slobodchikoff has spent decades doing this with prairie dogs. He found their “alarm calls” are not just “danger!” They are incredibly specific. They can combine “parts” to mean “tall… human… with… a… blue… shirt… is… walking… slowly.”

How did he prove it? He did interactive experiments. He had different people walk through the colony and recorded the calls. Then he played the recordings back. The prairie dogs would behave exactly as if the specific threat was there. A recording of “coyote” made them run underground. A recording of “hawk” made them scan the sky.

The “key” was the behavioral response.

The “Dictionary” of a Sperm Whale

Project CETI’s goal is to build a “dictionary” of codas. They may find that “click-click-pause-click” is a “greeting.” That “click-click-click” is a “follow me.”

But the real challenge is what’s next. Can we use that dictionary? Can we build a “speaker” and play “click-click-click” and see if the whales follow? If we can (and this is a huge “if”), we will have achieved, for the first time, a two-way, symbolic conversation with another species on Earth.

Comparing the Decryption Process

The two processes are opposites.

• With Animals: We have context. We can run experiments. We see the behavior. We are trying to find the signal. We are buried in context and trying to extract the “code.”
• With Aliens: We have no context. We have only a signal. We can’t run an experiment. We are buried in the “code” and trying to invent a context that would make it make sense.

This is the “Symbol Grounding Problem” again. We can match a prairie dog’s sound to a physical person. We can’t match an alien’s “pulse” to anything. We have to assume it means “pulse,” or “1,” or “on.”

The Ethics of Contact and Communication

This is not just a technical problem. It’s a moral one.

The Ethics of Animal Studies

How we’ve “studied” animals is a dark part of our history. We’ve put them in cages. We’ve isolated them. The “speaking” ape studies were often criticized for taking a social animal and raising it in a human lab, a deeply unnatural and arguably cruel act.

Modern animal communication studies are trying to be better. The focus is on wild animals, in their ownenvironment. The “listening” is passive. The “tags” are designed to be minimally invasive. There is a growing understanding that we are “guests” in their world, and we must not harm what we are trying to understand.

The Ethics of Alien Contact

This is the “Prime Directive” problem, from Star Trek. If we find a signal, do we answer? What if the “signal” is from a civilization that is less advanced than us? Do we “contact” them and “give” them our technology, potentially destroying their culture?

Or, more likely, what if the signal is from a civilization that is thousands or millions of years more advanced? Contact could be devastating. In human history, when an “advanced” technological culture has met a “less” technological one, it has never gone well for the less technological one.

This is the fear that drives the “Active SETI” debate. Listening is passive. But talking is an act with consequences we cannot possibly foresee.

Who Speaks for Earth? Who Speaks for the Chimp?

This is a deeper question. If we do decide to “talk,” who sends the message? What does it say? The Arecibo message was designed by a small group of scientists. It’s a picture of our science, our DNA. It doesn’t include our art, our music, our philosophies, our wars, our religions.

Who “speaks” for Earth?

The same question applies to animals. If we “decode” the chimps, do we have the right to “speak” for them? To “translate” their “wishes” to other humans? This is a heavy, paternalistic power.

The act of translation is an act of power. The translator always interprets. The search for a “decoder ring” is also a search for our own moral framework for how to use it.

Part 5: The Human Element – The Mirror of Interspecies Communication

The search for animal and alien communication is, in the end, not really about them. It’s about us. It’s a mirror. Our attempts, our failures, and our dreams reflect our own nature.

The Challenge of Anthropocentrism

We are, by nature, “anthropocentric.” We are “human-centered.” We assume “intelligence” looks like ourintelligence. We assume “communication” looks like our communication.

Seeing Ourselves in Animals

We see this with animals all the time. We want the chimp to be a “furry person.” We want the dolphin to be a “wise, gentle-souled” guide. We project our own myths onto them. This “anthropocentrism” blinded us for centuries, preventing us from seeing what was actually there: a complex, “other” mind that is intelligent on its own terms, not on ours.

The breakthrough in animal studies came when we stopped trying to turn them into humans and started trying to understand them as dolphins or crows.

Expecting Aliens to be “Human-like”

We do the same thing with aliens. Look at our science fiction. The aliens are almost always just “humans in rubber masks.” They are “warriors” (Klingons) or “logical” (Vulcans) or “greedy” (Ferengi). They are just exaggerated human traits.

This is a failure of imagination. A real alien will not be a “person.” It will be a product of a billion years of separate evolution, in a separate environment. Its “motivations” might not include “greed,” “anger,” “love,” or “logic.” It might “want” things we can’t even “want.”

The greatest challenge of “first contact” will be a psychological one. It will be the challenge of decentering humanity from the “middle” of the universe.

What We Learn About Ourselves

The search is a Rorschach test for our species.

The Search for Communication as a Search for Connection

Why do we do this? Why spend billions on radio telescopes? Why spend decades in a jungle with chimps?

It’s a deep human need. It’s the same need that makes us talk to our pets. It’s the search for connection. It’s a significant, primal loneliness. As a species, we “woke up” on this planet, looked around, and found ourselves to be the only ones talking. The only ones building cities, writing poems, and launching rockets.

The search for “animal” language is a search for our “family.” It’s to prove we are not as “alone” as we thought.

The search for “alien” language is a search for our “peers.” It’s to prove, on a cosmic scale, that the “thinking” “talking” experiment wasn’t just a one-time fluke.

Defining Our Own Intelligence

By trying to define “their” intelligence, we are forced, for the first time, to define our own.

What is human intelligence? Is it our “language”? Apes and AI can use language.

Is it “tool use”? Crows use tools.

Is it “culture”? Orcas have culture.

The more we find “human” traits in animals, the less “special” our own intelligence seems. It’s not a “sparkle” of “magic” that we have and they don’t. It’s a continuum. It’s a “spectrum” of different kinds of “minds.” This is a new, and deeply humbling, understanding of our own place in the world.

The Ultimate Goal: Understanding, Not Just Talking

This is the final, most important lesson.

The Difference Between Comprehension and Conversation

We are obsessed with “talking to” animals. “Hello, Mr. Dolphin.” We dream of a “conversation” with an alien.

This is a childish dream. The real goal is not conversation. It’s comprehension.

We don’t need to “talk” to the whale. We need to understand the whale. We need to understand its “Umwelt,” its social world, its needs. We need to understand how our actions (ship noise, pollution, climate change) are destroying its world.

We don’t need to “talk” to the alien. We need to comprehend that it is. The fact of its existence, the fact of a second, independent “genesis” of life, would be the single most transformative discovery in human history. The “content” of the message would be secondary to the “fact” of the message.

Co-existence as the True Test

The true test of “decoding” another intelligence is not whether we can have a “chat.” It’s whether we can co-exist.

So far, we are failing this test spectacularly on our own planet. The “animal communication” problem is, at its heart, a conservation problem. As we are just beginning to use AI to “decode” the whales, we are also boiling their oceans. We are just learning the “language” of the prairie dog, as we are paving over its habitat.

If we can’t use our “intelligence” to find a way to co-exist with the other intelligences on our own planet, what hope do we have with one from another star?

The animal challenge is our test. The alien challenge is the final exam.

Summary

The quest to communicate with non-human minds is a story in two parts. The first is a grounded, difficult, practical problem: deciphering the “aliens” on Earth. This is a challenge of data, observation, and context. It is a slow, methodical process of “listening” to beings with whom we share a biology, but not a mind. It is a quest to break free of our own human-centered bias and to appreciate intelligence on its own terms. Our tools are AI, biology, and patience. Our greatest barrier is our own anthropomorphism.

The second part is a speculative, philosophical, and cosmic problem. It is a search for a signal, a “needle” in the galactic “haystack,” with no context and no shared biology. It is a “N of 0” problem, where all our ideas are just projections of our own experience. Our tools are radio telescopes and mathematics. Our greatest barrier is our own limited imagination.

Both challenges are, in fact, mirrors. Our attempts to understand the “other” force us to define ourselves. They challenge our assumptions about “language,” “intelligence,” and “consciousness.” They reveal our deep need for connection and our significant loneliness as a “talking” species.

The goal is not just to “talk.” It’s to understand. And the true measure of that understanding will be our ability to co-exist. The animal challenge is our training ground. It’s a test of our empathy, our humility, and our wisdom. It is a test we have not yet passed. And the stars are, for now, silent, waiting to see if we will.