Jerusalem, 1 July, 2026 (TPS-IL) — The Coller Dolittle Challenge for Two-Way Interspecies Communication awarded its annual $100,000 prize to Israeli scientist Dr. Julie Elie, who discovered that zebra finches classify their calls according to meaning more so than acoustics.
Using AI machine learning and detailed observations of animal behavior, Dr. Elie and her team investigated the acoustic features of zebra finches’ vocalizations and created a “dictionary” classifying zebra finches’ vocalizations into 11 categories or call-types, with meanings such as aggression, hunger or bonding.
Elie took her research one step further, carrying out an experiment that tested whether the birds agreed with her classification. She trained zebra finches to press buttons which played her categorized call-types, each day rewarding only one of the call-types with seeds. The birds rapidly learned which call-type was being rewarded, waiting for their reward at the end of the playback, and interrupted non-rewarded call-types.