Interspecies Internet

Interspecies Internet is a multidisciplinary global think-tank to encourage the acceleration of Interspecies Communication with 4500+ members, including leading sector professionals. A primary premise of the project is that the Interspecies Internet can be used both to link non-human species that are not collocated and can use its computational capacity to introduce AI/ML methods to transduce signals from one species into coherent signals for another.

Our Mission

The Interspecies Internet’s mission is to encourage, explore and facilitate interfaces for interspecies communication and approaches for deciphering the communication of non-human animals. With the aim to positively impact species conservation, welfare, empathy, compassion, enrichment, sustainability, and understanding, it brings together a multidisciplinary group drawn from the sciences, arts and humanities in a rich collaborative forum, to advance the understanding and appreciation of the mental lives and intelligence of the diverse species with which we share our planet.

Our Story

Founded by Dr. Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. Co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet; Peter Gabriel, founder of Interspecies Internet, musician; Dr. Neil Gershenfeld, professor at MIT and the director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms; Dr. Diana Reiss, a cognitive psychologist, marine mammal scientist, and professor and the director of the Animal Behavior and Conservation Graduate Programs at Hunter College, CUNY.

Interspecies Internet garnered substantial attention with the presentation of their 2013 TED talk ‘An Interspecies Internet? An Idea In Progress’. In 2019 MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, Google, and the Jeremy Coller Foundation co-hosted the first workshop on 19th July. The invitation-only event was the first in-person launch of the initiative and was attended at maximum capacity. The day saw introductions from Jane Goodall and lightning talks from leading scientists.

While the Covid-19 pandemic prevented a 2020 in-person event there was great success with the Interspecies Conversations Digital Workshop and Public Conference. The invitation-only scientific workshop on Friday 17th July was attended by 115 academics and scientists while the public conference on Saturday 18th July saw an audience of 723. The event was truly global, the live broadcast reached six continents and is now available online. The audiences of both days now make up the 2000+ Interspecies Internet network. A further outcome of these events is an open Slack channel that currently has 243 contributing members.

“Harnessing technology to facilitate communication with other animals and helping us decode the myriad forms of communication used by other species is a challenge that both befits humanity and benefits us in the long run.”

Dr. Diana Reiss, Co-founder and Chair