NOVA Wonders - First Season

What do you wonder about?

The unknown.

What our place in the universe is.

Artificial intelligence.

Hello.

Look at this, what's this?

Animals.

An egg.

Your brain.

Life on a faraway planet.

"NOVA Wonders" investigating the biggest mysteries.

We have no idea what's going on there.

These planets in the middle

we think are in the habitable zone.

And making incredible discoveries.

Trying to understand

their behavior, their life, everything that goes on here.

Building an artificial intelligence

is going to be the crowning achievement of humanity.

We're three scientists

exploring the frontiers of human knowledge.

I'm a neuroscientist

and I study the biology of memory.

I'm a computer scientist and I build technology

that can read human emotions.

And I'm a mathematician,

using big data to understand our modern world.

And we're tacking the biggest questions...

- Dark energy? - Dark energy?

Of life... There's all of these microbes,

and we just don't know what they are.

And the cosmos.

On this episode...

animals made all kinds of noise.

But what does it mean?

What they're telling the female is,

"I'm free of parasites."

Can we crack these mysterious codes?

The gesture means "Travel with me."

His vocabulary

was like a two-and-a-half year old human child.

This is Dr. Doolittle's dream.

"NOVA Wonders"

"What Are Animals Saying"... Right now.

All around us are alien tongues...

and they don't come from space.

From whale songs, and wolf howls,

to birds chirping and dolphins clicking...

The animal world is filled with mysterious conversations.

Could we ever tap in?

We like to think that language sets us apart from the beasts.

But are we really all that special?

Today scientists are starting to decode those communications,

discovering that we might not be alone.

I'm Andre Fenton.

I'm Rana El Kaliouby.

I'm Talithia Williams, and in this episode,

"NOVA Wonders"... "What are Animals Saying?"

And what does it say about us?

Come on.

When I'm working with Zach... - Lie down.

...it seems like magic.

Zach, that'll do. Zach, here.

Experiencing that kind of connection with a dog...

Come by. Lie down.

You're in sync, it's like any other connection

you have with someone.

Lie down.

Where you really get along, and you're like,

"Oh wow, that was an amazing conversation."

Robin Queen is a linguist

and competitive sheep herder from the University of Michigan,

and like many of us, she likes to think

she can talk with her dog.

Okay.

I think we are, as humans, we're fascinated by the idea, the Dr. Dolittle idea.

We want that to be true in some way

When I started working with the dogs,

I was shocked at what they could do.

Don't lose it.

Lie down.

And for border collies like Zack,

herding sheep is just the beginning.

Get spider.

They appear to have

a sophisticated understanding of language.

Get spider, bring it over here.

Their ability to learn human words

are almost unlimited.

It seems to be, you know,

every year a new dog comes by with a larger vocabulary.

A glance at YouTube proves the point.

Tessa, get pumpkin.

Tessa can recognize four different toys.

Good girl, bring it over here.

Excellent!

Get pig.

And that's puppies' play compared to Gable...

He knows 150.

Good boy.

Chase, find meow, find meow.

But all of these pooches pale

in comparison to Chaser...

There's meow! Come here!

I say throw me that ball.

...who has been proclaimed

the world's smartest dog.

Chaser was taught the individual names

of over a thousand objects,

and that's really pretty cool

because it starts to try and get at that question

of how special are humans?

Chaser can understand hundreds of words,

but all she can do is say "ruff."

She can't actually say any of those words back.

Now, what would be really impressive

is when Chaser starts saying, "You go get the bunny."

Then I'd be impressed.

Find roach, find roach.

But as impressive as Chaser's feats are,

do they qualify as... Language.

Language.

Since the dawn of history,

we've imagined animals to be like us.

I'm a horse, not a guinea pig.

Our stories are filled with talking creatures.

But what's the reality?

Well, to answer that question,

let's talk about language.

To scientists, it's a learned set of symbols

that can be combined into infinite meanings.

Just consider these... Dog bites man.

Man bites dog.

By just changing the order of a couple words,

the meaning of the message is completely different.

Well, this is the cornerstone of human language.

It allows us to tell stories, write poetry,

negotiate contracts, whisper sweet nothings.

The question is, is this skill unique to us?

There are two chimpanzees in Rome

who have brought a new "twist" in communication

between animal and human...

For over half a century,

scientists have been working with our closest relatives

to answer that question.

Viki was adopted when her own mother

couldn't feed her anymore.

At first, scientists tried teaching language

to chimps by raising them like children.

Perhaps one of the most famous of these was Viki.

She loves all the attention and affection,

and she loves everyone.

Do this, Viki.

Not only is this approach now considered unethical,

it didn't work.

After seven years of intense training,

she could barely utter four words.

"Mama," Viki.

So, scientists switched to sign language.

If you watch Koko closely,

she's learning to put her fingertips

to her mouth to sign "eat."

Apes like Koko the gorilla

hinted that apes have some ability for language.

Koko proved an adept student.

Everyone was amazed at how well

the little gorilla was catching on.

Let's do just a little bit more work

and then we'll get a whole bunch of surprises, okay?

But it wasn't until this guy came along

that researchers discovered

exactly how impressive that ability was.

In the world of ape cognition,

Kanzi is, you know, Elvis Presley.

All right, Kanzi, come on, tell me what this is,

what's this a picture of?

Banana.

Very good!

Instead of sign language, Kanzi learned these.

They're called lexigrams,

abstract symbols that represent words.

What's this? Look at this, what's this?

An egg, very good. That's an egg, good job!

And Kanzi has learned over 400 of them.

Good, keep going!

Good job, Kanz!

Plastic bag.

Good, Kanzi, good stuff!

Amazingly, he started teaching himself

this skill as a baby over 30 years ago.

I want you to go put the onions in your hot food.

Kanzi might have been around 11 or 12 at the time.

His vocabulary, spoken English vocabulary,

was assessed in comparison to

a two-and-a-half-year-old human child.

Now, I want you to take this spoon

and put it on top of the bucket.

Can you do that for me?

Can you put it on top of that bucket?

Watching him today at 37,