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What has information theory to say about talking to spiders?

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There’s a way we can do that, provided the spider has anything to say:

An MIT researcher has developed an algorithm that translates the delicate vibrations of spider webs into music

One of the presentations at the American Chemical Society’s Spring 2021 meeting featured an algorithm that makes music from the analysis of spiders’ webs …

But what does it sound like?

News, “Spiders may not know it but they are making music” at Mind Matters News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn2kEq_pXU8&t=1s

Digitization can make information interchangeable in this way. For example, some researchers managed to encode a short video in DNA. As a recent science paper explains, “genomes appear similar to natural language texts, and protein domains can be treated as analogs of words.”

News, “Spiders may not know it but they are making music” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: The algorithm may help researchers communicate with spiders by analyzing the signals they send other spiders, via web vibrations.

Note: Spiders are more intelligent than once thought and they can even be taught simple tricks. See: In what ways are spiders intelligent? They are not out to get anyone but they can’t help noticing and reacting to the human beings around them.

Comments
I doubt that the algorithm would help. Old-fashioned linguistic observation and interrogation is all they need. Listen to the spider's vibrations, using something like frequency-shift keying to make it more audible. Send the spider a 'word' that sounds like one of its patterns and see how it responds. This process sometimes yields Kangaroo ("I don't understand"), but usually leads to a vocabulary and grammar.polistra
April 18, 2021
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