If an animal could speak, would we listen?

A prize aimed at cracking inter-species communication presents a moral challenge: It compels us to reconsider our thinking on animal welfare.

- Anjana Ahuja

Mention Dr Dolittle, and it is impossible not to hum the film's Oscar-winning ditty written by Leslie Bricusse and sung by Rex Harrison: "Think what it would mean if I could talk to the animals, just imagine it/Chatting to a chimp in chimpanzee/Imagine talking to a tiger, chatting to a cheetah/What a neat achievement that would be."

The famed, fictional naturalist has now inspired a lucrative science prize aimed at cracking the challenge of inter-species communication. Last week, an inaugural US$100,000 (S$129,000) went to a US team studying dolphin whistles.

A grand prize of a US$10 million equity investment, or an alternative of US$500,000 in cash, awaits whichever research team that can truly deliver the goods: not just deciphering the language of another species, but using it to elicit a reply from an animal.

The Coller Dolittle challenge — bankrolled by a philanthropic foundation set up by financier Jeremy Coller, a vegan and animal lover who describes the current food system as unsustainable — is unashamedly modelled on the Turing test. That 20th-century test spurred efforts to design a machine capable of imitating human conversation and became a touchstone in the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI).