We’re hiring two Bioacoustics Annotators! Help build and curate the datasets used to train and evaluate our models for animal communication research. 📅 Apply by August 17: earthspecies.org/2026/07/29/w...

What could we discover if more researchers could easily work across the growing wealth of bioacoustic data? alp-data brings 35+ datasets into one interface, making it easier to study communication across species and uncover new insights into animal lives. Learn more: sonicfield.org/alp-data-ani...

We’re hiring two Bioacoustic Annotators! 🚀 Help build the datasets advancing the study of animal communication and enabling new discoveries about the rich lives and intelligence of other species. Apply today: earthspecies.org/2026/07/29/w... View all open roles: earthspecies.org/about-us/#jobs

We’ve just open-sourced alp-data, the first piece of shared infrastructure for Animal Language Processing! 🚀 One Python package, one interface, 35+ bioacoustic datasets spanning birds, whales, primates, anurans, and insects. Now open and ready to use. Learn more: earthspecies.org/2026/07/22/i...

We're excited to share that ESP’s Marius Miron is delivering a keynote at the ICML Workshop on Machine Learning for Audio on Animal Language Processing — an emerging frontier for AI and our understanding of life on Earth. @icmlconf.bsky.social 🔗 Learn more: mlforaudioworkshop.github.io

In 2025, we open-sourced NatureLM-audio, launched a multi-year study of killer whale communication with @raincoast.org, expanded collaborations across species, and co-organized the first AI for Non-Human Animal Communication workshop at NeurIPS. Learn more: earthspecies.org/annual-repor...

Fireflies are best known for their glowing displays, but those flashes are also a communication system. Research from @oritpeleg.bsky.social's lab is helping uncover how these signals are coordinated across groups and how synchronized displays emerge. 🔗 Learn more: www.peleglab.com 📸 Nolan Bonnie

We’re still gathering feedback on our working framework for Animal Language Processing (ALP), an approach that uses frontier AI to study animal communication. If you have 5–10 minutes, we'd love your perspective on the terminology, framing, and overall concept. 📝 : docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🔊If AI is going to help us study animal communication, we need to understand what it's learning from sound. In a new paper accepted at @interspeech.bsky.social, we introduce a framework to help researchers better understand, compare, and select bioacoustic models. 📄 arxiv.org/pdf/2606.14662

1/5 What counts as a communicative interaction? This was a recurring question at the recent Computational and Mechanistic Analyses of Communicative Interactions symposium, where ESP's Maddie Cusimano and @loganjames.bsky.social presented their research on carrion crow and zebra finch communication.

This Friday at McGill University, @loganjames.bsky.social and Maddie Cusimano will join researchers exploring computational approaches to animal communication at the symposium “Computational and Mechanistic Analyses of Communicative Interactions.” Register at: logansjames.github.io/events.html

Using our models, ESP and the University of León found that most crow communication happens through soft, close-range murmurs. At @raincoast.org, ESP's tools are accelerating killer whale research by processing field note recordings in hours instead of months. 📄: news.mongabay.com/2026/05/from...

It's hard to protect what we don’t feel connected to. At #ChangeNOW, ESP’s Director of Strategic Impact, Jane Lawton, spoke about how connection, storytelling, and listening more deeply can reshape how we see and value all life on Earth. 🌍 🎥 Watch the full talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=N83P...

📄 New preprint: carrion crow communication For the first time, along with the University of León, we charted the vocal repertoire of a crow population and mapped it to social functions and behavioral context. 📄: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🔊: projects.earthspecies.org/cooperative-...

ESP is heading to #ICASSP2026! We’ll be presenting our paper: Multi-Layer Attentive Probing Improves Transfer of Audio Representations for Bioacoustics. See you in Barcelona 🌟 Learn more: www.scilit.com/publications/ed058249cd6daf336c32c773c191a2c0

🌍 Happy Earth Day 🌍 Across oceans, forests, and skies, Earth is alive with conversations we are only beginning to hear. The field of Animal Language Processing is deeply interdisciplinary, and there is a lot of incredible work unfolding. What’s inspiring you today this #EarthDay?

ESP is heading to ICLR 2026, where we’ll be presenting our paper on AVEX! We've also just added nine new usage examples and an interactive Model Selector to the AVEX project page. 🗓 Learn more: iclr.cc/virtual/2026... 📄 Project page: projects.earthspecies.org/avex/

As a founding researcher @mhagiwara.bsky.social shaped what ESP is today. His legacy at ESP is everywhere. We miss him dearly as a friend and colleague. 🔗 Read his words: masatohagiwara.net/lcl.html 💙 Support his family: www.gofundme.com/f/support-ma...

We just updated our interactive demo of NatureLM-audio with a new version of the model, v1.1. To learn what you can do with it now, check out our Prompting Guide! 🤗Demo: huggingface.co/spaces/Earth... 📄Guide: projects.earthspecies.org/naturelm-aud...

🌟Community Spotlight 🌟 We recently spoke with Felipe Parodi, the lead developer of PrimateFace, an open-source platform for automated facial analysis across the primate order. Learn more earthspecies.org/2026/04/07/w...

2/4 We're calling this convergence #AnimalLanguageProcessing (ALP) — an approach that leverages frontier AI to study non-human communication at a scale and resolution that simply wasn't feasible before. Learn more: earthspecies.org/2026/04/02/a...

1/4 Over the last decade, we’ve observed a converge in #animalcommunication research as large-scale behavioral & #bioacoustic datasets + advancing ML methods are transforming what was once species-specific, hypothesis-limited work into something far broader.🧵👇

Our Director of Strategic Impact, Jane Lawton, will be speaking at ChangeNOW in Paris 🇫🇷 Speaking on “Making Nature Protection Sexy” with voices from The Nat, WaterBear, and UN Live. If you’re there, come along! We’d love to connect. Learn more: www.changenow.world

Can AI help us break the interspecies understanding barrier in time to change our relationship with nature? 🌍 ESP Co-Founder, Aza Raskin, will explore this in his keynote at #SXSW2026. You can livestream the talk at youtube.com/live/QrJUmon...

We're thrilled to welcome Steven VanRoekel as ESP's new CEO 🚀 Steve brings leadership across public, private, and nonprofit sectors, along with and a deep belief that AI-driven breakthroughs in animal communication can transform how we relate to our planet. 🔗 www.earthspecies.org/blog/introdu...

This #WorldWildlifeDay, we celebrate Earth’s extraordinary diversity: 🐿️ Prairie dog calls can signal what kind of predator is coming 🐋 Whale songs spread across oceans and pass through generations 🦜 Grey parrots give their chicks names they use for life What else might we learn?

We're heading to the International Conservation Technology Conference 🐋 ESP's Research Advocate, Diane Kim, will present our latest work on NatureLM-audio — the first large audio language model for animal vocalizations. 🗓️ February 18th ⏰ 3:50 PM - 4:00 PM 📍Cusco 2 If you’re attending, come along!

To overcome challenges of passive playbacks, we developed ZF-AIM, a generative audio-LLM that engages in real-time, two-way vocal interactions with live birds.

New preprint on vocal communication in zebra finches! 🐦 Earth Species Project and McGill University analyzed over 1.5 million female zebra finch calls to understand how female zebra finches modulate their vocalizations during natural exchanges.

We’ve proven machines can learn to use language, but it took brute force to get there. Meanwhile, animal communication evolved over millions of years under real-world constraints, shaping systems that are adaptable and efficient. What can #AI learn from nature? 🧠 Read more: bit.ly/ai-biomimicry