Host: All right. I need you to listen carefully. Can you tell what's making these noises? And I'll give you one hint. It's a recording from Ocean Networks Canada. If you guessed whales, good job. If you guessed humpback song with sperm whale clicks, I am truly impressed. Okay, that's what was making the sounds. But what were they saying? Well, researchers are on it and they're using AI to crack the code. We dig into what science is finding out about the creatures around us, and how it could change how we think about them and how we treat them. And it's not just animals. Turns out a lot of things around us have something to say. We sit down with forestry scientists and author Suzanne Simard to find out what trees talk about and what we can and should learn from them. This is The Rundown.

Host: Artificial intelligence is helping researchers unlock the world of animal communication, and what they're discovering could raise profound moral and legal questions. Kristen Andrews is a philosophy professor at York University and holds the York Research Chair in Animal Minds, and she joins us in studio. Great to have you. How are you doing?

Kristen Andrews: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

Host: There is a lot of excitement in terms of the potential of using AI in order to communicate with animals, and I'm hoping you can help us understand how is AI currently being used to try and talk to animals?

Kristen Andrews: Well, right now we're trying to develop a two-way communication system between humans and other animals. This is the dream. This is always been the dream, I think, for humans who've since Doctor Dolittle, wanting to be able to talk to animals. So a two-way communication system would be a way in which we could have a conversation with other animals, but we're not there yet.

Host: Well, tell me what what have we discovered so far?

Kristen Andrews: So far, what we've discovered is that we might actually be able to create something like this, because animals might have communication systems of the sort that might be construed as language, something that could be translated into language. And the reason we know this is because we've been seeing that animal communication systems have structure to them, something like human syntax, that there are statistical regularities in the sounds that dolphins or whales make. We know that bird song has recursion in it. These are features that were thought to be human, unique at one point, and now we're finding it. We're finding it in other animals as well.

Host: Scientist Suzanne Simard has changed the way we understand trees and how they interact with the world around them. Rundown producer Eric Bombicino sat down with her to talk about her new book, When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World and why she says trees are social creatures.

Host: I want to welcome Suzanne Simard onto the program. Thank you for coming to hang out in our, I guess our little our little bunkie here.

Suzanne Simard: It's really cool to be here.

Host: You are the author of the fantastic book, When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World. And you are a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia. So your work has. And I'll just go direct with this. It has changed my experience when I walk through a forest. So I thought maybe we could start there. If you and I are going through a walk right now to understand how alive and communicative the forest is, where do we start? Where should we look?

Suzanne Simard: Well, I think just be quiet with yourself and open yourself up to all of the dimensions that the forest is interacting with you. That includes the sounds, the wind, the smells, the crunch of the forest floor under your feet, the chattering of the squirrels, the river that might be flowing by your own heartbeat. Then you become one with the forest. It might take a second. It might take a few minutes. It might take you an hour. You might have to sit down and do it. But it's really it's a really important personal experience that that helps you connect with, with your home.