Dr Julie Elie at the University of California, Berkeley, was awarded the 2026 Coller-Dolittle prize for two-way interspecies communication after working out the 11 core calls in the zebra finch vocabulary and their meanings.
Other scientists shortlisted for the prize included a French team that showed how African striped mice reveal their identity through ultrasonic squeaks; a Swiss-US team that found bonobos combine their calls into sequences that resemble human sentences; and another French team that worked with researchers in Côte d’Ivoire to understand chimpanzee hoos and yelps.
Beyond the annual prizes for progress, the foundation has established a $10m grand prize for cracking the problem of two-way human-animal communication.
