animals & us

Squirrels love pumpkins. They also play, chase each other, fight for the pumpkin, and vocalize all sort of calls.

Animals and humans have an ambiguous relationship: at once close and antagonistic.

Animals share considerable physical and chemical features with humans. They court to mate and the youth learn by play. We bury pets in cemeteries and print animal cartoons all over children's clothing. And we slaughter 100 billion of them each year and have caused the global collapse of over 75% of wildlife populations since the 1960s.

This dichotomy creates deep intellectual, philosophical, and ethical paradoxes, which I believe it is time for humankind to address.

sentience

This fox let me follow behind for several minutes in the Rocky Mountains

In my research and explorations, I have studied animal behavior for several years. I have applied physics to understand how birds flock together, how sheep herds stay cohesive under pressure, and how fireflies synchronize their flashes.

My outdoor peregrinations have brought mesmerizing encounters with wildlife: foxes, bears, bobcats, coyotes, horses, burros, mountain goats... Merely observing squirrels and chipmunks scuffling around my backyard brings me a lot of joy. I participate in various conservation projects. Among them, tiny-ghosts leverages Vision Language Models to monitor remote firefly populations in the Arizona desert.

Animals are fascinating. There is something profound about considering how beings with a different sensory and cognitive system might experience the same reality as us.

There is now a considerable amount of scientific evidence demonstrating that animals are sentient: capable of consciousness, emotion, agency. See for example Jonathan Birch's The Edge of Sentience Some species even exhibit complex collective traits akin to language and culture.

interspecies communication

A wild horse in Colorado's Sand Wash basin

I would like to help reconcile humans with their earthbound counterparts. I think modern AI, and LLMs in particular, offer the prospect of monumental advances in our understanding of animal behavior and communication.

I am looking to join efforts to advance the field of interspecies communication. Please reach out to me if you'd like to chat.

This is also for us: what we learn about animals will redefine our perception of our place in the world — as when astronomy put the Sun at the center.