If there was a program that collected the barks, woofs, and whines of dogs along with a human description of what it means, could you process that data to create a sort of translator for dog speak that tells you the general idea of what they want? (e.g. hungry, glad to see you)
It would probably need an indicator for dog breeds since they will sound different. And obviously dogs don’t speak the same sort of language we do, but could general emotions be translated?
Think a little bit like those apps that (human) bird watchers catalogue bird sounds that are assigned to specific bird species. Many people have a good idea of what a dog wants/needs when they hear the noises it makes, so I can imagine something similar for dog owners. They record sounds of their dogs and what they believe it means, just as bird watchers do for mating calls.
Would this work at all? Or are the sounds of dogs too varying, even accounting for dog breeds? And how does its effectiveness change for cats and other noisy pets?
There was an (android) app to translate cat meows a few years ago … granted it was a bit frivolous, though they claimed underlying research.
The translation it produced of my cats meows into what they might want was plain low quality, the meows were easier to understand than the word soup produced. (Tying to get the cat to meow on command is a whole different factor)
I’m very confident that when my cats meow they are always saying a variant of “hooomaaaan!”
They’re like little eternally drunk roommates who walk around naked and are way too touchy for a household with children.