Our partnership with @raincoast.org to study killer whale communication has been a highlight of 2025. 👉 Listen to the voices of these incredible animals and learn more about how you can support the project: www.raincoast.org/listen/

🐦‍⬛ New paper in Animal Cognition covering our carrion crow project with partners at @Univeristy of Leon. 52 mini-biologgers were deployed on wild carrion crows in Spain — capturing 127K+ vocalizations. 🔗: www.earthspecies.org/blog/unlocki... (1/4)

Will AI help us break the interspecies understanding barrier in time to change our relationship with the rest of nature? @aza will keynote @sxsw.com to bring a conversation about what happens when can listen to and learn from the languages of other species. The clock is ticking. 🌍 #SXSW2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us at #NeurIPS2025 for the inaugural AI for Non-Human Animal Communication workshop! Seeing a room full of researchers from ML, bioacoustics, and ethology gather around shared questions was such an exciting moment for the field.

Looking forward to connecting tomorrow at #NeurIPS2025 for the AI for Non-Human Animal Communication workshop! If you're at NeurIPS already, feel free to stop by: 📍 Room 9 (Upper Level), San Diego Convention Center 🗓️ Sat, Dec 6, 9 AM-5 PM 🔗 aiforanimalcomms.org

We’re less than 2 weeks away from the AI for Non-Human Animal Communication Workshop at @neuripsconf.bsky.social! Meet the full lineup of Lightning Talk speakers spanning research across the tree of life: from cetaceans, primates & frogs, to fruit bats, fruit flies & pollinators 🐋 🐸 🦇 🐝

Meet our speakers for the AI for Non-Human Animal Communication workshop at @NeurIPSConf! 🐬 Laela Sayigh – decoding dolphin communication 🦇 Oisin Mac Aodha – AI for biodiversity monitoring 🐦 Julie Elie – neural mechanisms of songbird & bat vocal learning Learn more and join: aiforanimalcomms.org

We're thrilled to welcome @drthomasz.bsky.social to our Board! From leading NASA science missions that reveal new worlds and seeking for signs of life across the cosmos, Thomas is now helping us unlock a different frontier: understanding non-human intelligence right here on our own planet.

“We are losing the other cultures of Earth.” 🎧 Aza Raskin talks with @claresduffy.bsky.social on how AI's potential to help us understand animal communication might also reconnect humanity with the rest of nature - before it's too late. www.cnn.com/audio/podcas...

🕊️ Dr. Goodall transformed how we see the natural world and our place within it. Her courage, curiosity, and deep listening to other species inspire the heart of our mission at Earth Species Project. We will miss her dearly.

🌍 For the first time, we asked the world what they want from AI that can decode animal communication. The answer? 70% want to know what animals think and feel. The world is ready to listen. Read the report for more insights: www.earthspecies.org/blog/what-th...

💡 How can we build #AI models that generalize across species + tasks? 🐦🐋🐒 This is a fundamental question for our work at ESP and it’s the topic of our most recent paper and blog post: www.earthspecies.org/blog/what-ma... 🧵Read below for more👇

🐋🐦🐸 We just launched an interactive demo of NatureLM-audio on @hf.co! 👉 Try the demo with your audio or ours, share your feedback, and help us shape the future of decoding animal communication: huggingface.co/blog/EarthSp...

⚠️ Deadline extended— submit by Sept. 5th! There is still time to apply to be a part of the AI and Non-Human Animal Communication workshop at @neuripsconf.bsky.social. 🔗 Learn more & apply: aiforanimalcomms.org

Join us at @neuripsconf.bsky.social 2025 🔉 There is still time to apply to be a part of the AI for Non-Human Animal Communication workshop! Submit your proposals on the intersection of AI & bioacoustics by Aug. 31 and learn more at aiforanimalcomms.org

FrogID tested our NatureLM-audio model to help verify frog calls from the public. Even without fine-tuning, it could save 300+ hrs of work yearly— and it even excelled on tasks it wasn't trained for. 🐸💡 www.earthspecies.org/blog/listeni...

Over 8 million species share our planet—and until now we’ve only understood one. We've proposed a talk at #SXSW2026 all about how AI is helping us listen to the voices of nature. If you'd like to see us there, click the heart on our proposal to vote💚 ⬇️ participate.sxsw.com/flow/sxsw/sx...

📢 Call for Submissions ESP is hosting the AI for Non-Human Animal Communication workshop at @neuripsconf.bsky.social 2025! We welcome short papers & proposals that explore the use of AI in understanding animal communication. 🗓️ Deadline: Aug 31, 2025 🔗 aiforanimalcomms.org

What if we could decipher the voices of other species? ESP co-founder & Board member Katie Zacarian joins Ben Goldsmith on Rewilding the World to explore how frontier AI is decoding animal communication—and what it could mean for interspecies connection👇🏽 tinyurl.com/32czw4zu

To truly share this planet requires a shift in how we think, act, and connect across species. This #WorldConservationDay, we're reflecting on this responsibility, which is at the core of our mission, and reinforced by the perspective Christiana brings as the newest member of our board.

For the first time, a non-primate species has been proven to use gestures to signal what they want. 🐘🍎 New work led by @vestaeleuteri.bsky.social at @univie.ac.at‪ marks a key milestone in animal communication, showing elephants are capable of goal-directed intentionality. tinyurl.com/yc3a2vew

Thanks to‪ @louromain.bsky.social & Circle of Voices for including ESP’s perspective on #UNOC2025. Listen to hear Jane Lawton (at 54:34) share reflections and learnings we’re taking forward as we continue our work to decode animal communication. tinyurl.com/bdcu32ac

Last quarter we celebrated big wins—from open-sourcing NatureLM-audio to launching new partnerships & projects. Today, we look ahead to a new chapter as Katie Zacarian passes the baton after 3 incredible years of leadership. Read more: mailchi.mp/a5d101927fdd...

We’re partnering with @raincoast.org to explore how killer whales communicate in an evolving ocean environment. Combining aerial & underwater data, we're building a robust dataset leveraging AI to analyze 10+ years of bioacoustic recordings. Read more: www.earthspecies.org/blog/decodin...

We're welcoming Christiana Figueres to our Board. A global leader in climate diplomacy, Christiana brings a fierce commitment to systems change—and a shared vision for humanity that centers the natural world. Join the conversation: www.earthspecies.org/donate

We're compiling a list of all our collaborators, staff & partners in one place. Check out our StarterPack to connect with some of the key voices in animal communication, AI, bioacoustics & ethology👇🏽 Let us know if we missed anyone & please share to help us grow the community 🔊 🌎 go.bsky.app/AdivEXH

ESP is headed to Nice for #UNOC2025 🌊 Catch us throughout the week as we co-host, listen to, and learn from sessions exploring how humans interact with the natural world—and how we can help drive momentum toward systems that support a more resilient ocean and planet.

2024 was a pivotal year for ESP—we launched new models & benchmarks, open-sourced NatureLM-audio, and led key conversations on interspecies understanding. Dive into our 2024 Annual Report for a glimpse into our progress ⬇️ tinyurl.com/44c9r2sa

AI provides the opportunity to equip animal communication researchers with new capabilities. Thanks @omarg.bsky.social for celebrating how advancements like Laela Sayigh's award-winning work & ESP's models are helping break down interspecies language barriers. www.cnet.com/science/want...

Wildlife populations have declined by 73% since 1970—up from 69% in 2022, according to @worldwildlife.org. At ESP, we believe every species has a voice. This #WorldBiodiversityDay, we invite you to reflect on why listening matters now more than ever. Learn more: livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/

AI may never give us a Rosetta Stone for animal communication—but like the telescope, has the potential to expand what humans are able to perceive. Thank you @sarahscoles.bsky.social for highlighting this work & asking the challenging questions that come with it ⬇️

ESP co-founder & president, Aza Raskin delivered the keynote at the 2025 @calacademy.bsky.social fundraising gala where he spoke about the importance of investing in science & how approaches like frontier #AI are shaping a more resilient & connected future. Watch here: youtube.com/live/PHYplEWTovc

#ICYMI the ESP research team presented at #ICLR2025 last week, sharing the latest updates on NatureLM-audio. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to connect, exchange ideas & hear about this exciting work. Explore NatureLM-audio, now open-sourced: earthspecies.github.io/naturelm-aud...

📢 We've open-sourced NatureLM-audio, the first audio-language foundation model for #bioacoustics. Trained on large-scale animal vocalization, human speech & music datasets, the model enables zero-shot classification, detection & querying across diverse species & environments 👇🏽

I'll be at #ICLR2025 in Singapore this Saturday for poster session 6, co-presenting our NatureLM-audio project! If you're around and interested in AI for bioacoustics, ecology, or related areas, would love to meet up — feel free to reach out!

AVES is now pip-installable 🎉 This self-supervised, transformer-based model is pretrained on large-scale animal vocalization datasets & thanks to our incredible engineering team is now more accessible than ever–ready to run with just a single command. 🔗 github.com/earthspecies...

📢#BioDCASE2025 is here! This new challenge brings DCASE-style evaluation to #bioacoustics – applying #machinelearning to better understand the sounds of the natural world. ESP helped organize one of this year’s tasks & we can’t wait to see how you tackle it👇🏽 biodcase.github.io/

ESP is heading to #ICASSP2025! We'll be presenting our paper, Biodenoising, at the Bio Acoustic III poster session on 4/11 at 8:30am. Looking forward to sharing this work & connecting with teams in Hyderabad 🌟 Demo: earthspecies.github.io/biodenoising/ cc: Marius Miron & @mhagiwara.bsky.social

What does it mean to understand another species? For the first time, experts from across ethology, biology & tech have developed a set of critera for decoding animal communication. Learn more in @interspecies-io.bsky.social's landmark report: www.interspecies.io/publication

ESP Senior Research Scientist, Sara Keen's talk from the 2025 @aiforanimals.bsky.social conference is now available on YouTube! 📺 🔊 Watch below to learn more about our work using cutting-edge tools in bioacoustics and AI. 🔗: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nI_...

We’ve been looking ahead – last week we shared the very first look at our guiding strategy in our newsletter✨ Missed it? Catch up below & join our mailing list to always get our latest updates👇🏽 mailchi.mp/dd109cf2828d...

We’ve grown our research team! This high-caliber group, led by Chief Scientist Olivier Pietquin, is already working hard to scale our models & projects and drive our progress toward a future of interspecies understanding 🔬🌍 Learn more about our work: bit.ly/4iMmNLE

#BirdCLEF+ 2025 is now open! 🐦💡 ESP is proud to support this year's competition by overseeing a FootPrint Coalition Science Engine grant that funded a key dataset focused on under-studied species from Colombia’s Middle Magdalena Valley. 🔗 Learn more & participate: www.imageclef.org/BirdCLEF2025

To protect nature, we must rethink our connection to it 🔄🌿 In her recent feature with @chathamhouse.org, ESP’s Jane Lawton shared how AI is helping us understand other species—and why shifting our perspective is key to a regenerative future. Read more ⬇️ bit.ly/43OBolc

Our Director of Communications, Brittany Solano, is heading to #SXSW2025 next week! Hope to see you on March 10 at 10am for a conversation on how we're leveraging AI to transform the way we understand and engage with the natural world 🌱🌍 📆: schedule.sxsw.com/2025/events/...

Have you heard viral hits on the whale wide web? 🐳 🎶 This week ESP Co-Founder Aza Raskin spoke with @baratunde.com on #LifeWithMachines about how AI is revealing hidden details of animal culture & the responsibility that comes with understanding these voices. 🎙️Listen at: bit.ly/41IF7zD

The natural world is full of conversations we’ve yet to understand. At ESP, we’re exploring new ways to listen and deepen our connection with the world around us 🌍🤝 This #WorldWildlifeDay, we invite you to reflect with us—when do you feel most connected to the rest of nature?

We're thrilled to have Senior Research Scientist, Sara Keen represent ESP at the 2025 AI for Animals conference this weekend! Catch her talk on Saturday afternoon to hear more about ESP's latest milestones in transforming bioacoustics research 🔊✨

ESP co-founder, Aza Raskin spoke with @kncukier.bsky.social on the Babbage podcast by @economist.com, where he shared how we're leveraging AI to decode animal communication and working toward a future of interspecies understanding 🌍 www.economist.com/podcasts/202...

One of our latest papers, Biodenoising, has been accepted to #ICASSP2025! Biodenoising is our newest method to tackle one of ethology & bioacoustics' biggest data analysis challenges – background noise! 🧵👇🏻 www.earthspecies.org/blog/biodeno...