DFG funds Deep Animal Linguistics in Killer Whales!

Symbolic picture for the article. The link opens the image in a large view. — Northern Resident Killer Whale during the fieldwork expedition 2018/2019 in Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada (copyright by Anthro-Media)

May 29, 2020

The German Research Council (DFG) funds our Project Grant “Deep Animal Linguistic Analysis (DALA) – Decoding Animal Communication using Bioacoustics and Machine Learning”! In total, FAU will receive 260.000 EUR for 24 months in the first project phase. The total project volume is 400.000 EUR.

We aim at building deep learning models towards the improved analysis of killer whale communication. The research is highly interdisciplinary and will involve fieldwork at the Canadian coast closely following animal communication and behavior. The analysis is supported by automatic tools for acoustic and optical animal localization and unsupervised speech and language processing tools to support biologists to better understand the animals’ interactions.

Many thanks to Rachel Cheng, Christian Bergler, Volker Barth, Elmar Nöth, and Heribert Hofer for their great support towards realizing this exciting project!