The understanding of the language of animals has reportedly been achieved by a Cambridge professor, who explains that their communication is not devoid of meaning as many may think.

Dr Arik Kershenbaum, nicknamed ‘the real-life Doctor Dolittle’, is an expert on animal communication and explains that everything from a dog’s whine to a dolphin’s whistle is full of meaning.

In particular, Dr. Kershenbaum says that “animals have develop communication because it is useful for these and therefore in that sense it must make sense. For example, if you hear male birds singing this could mean “this is my territory, come and mate with me”.

However, he clarifies that to understand what animal sounds mean, Dr. Kershenbaum does not just listen. “The only way to really understand what animals are saying is to understand what animals are doing,” he says.

Regarding his method of understanding animal language, he said that “we look at the diversity of sound in a particular utterance and try to relate it to what’s going on with the animal at that moment.”

Wolves howling to most people is nothing short of terrifying, but to Dr. Kernshenbaum the sound of a wolf’s howl tells a story.

Dr. Kershenbaum took video of a howling wolf and put it into special software so he could listen more closely to the sound.

What it revealed was that this wolf was lonely, perhaps because he had been separated from his pack, and was trying to find his friends.

Dr. Kershenbaum explained that “this is a long-winded scream that doesn’t change much. That’s typical of this kind of lonely howling.”

According to him, these are the howls that wolves use when they want to keep in touch with their pack from afar or when dispersing males are looking for mates.

Unlike dolphin whistling, Dr. Kershenbaum reported that dolphin communication is among the most difficult to study.

Because not only is it very difficult to observe dolphins in the wild, but even when scientists can their form of communication is radically different from anything else.

“With dolphins, it’s really difficult because we don’t even know the context of what their language would be if they had one,” the Cambridge scientist pointed out.