Machine Intelligence techniques are helping us to understand non-human animal speech in powerful new ways.

We can begin to decode the meaning and intention of non-human animal noises, and, tantalisingly, to learn that there appears to be a syntax to mouse squeaks, meaning that certain noises in a certain order denote different meanings.

The evidence, therefore, hints at non-human animals having something akin to actual languages. Those grunts and howls convey much more information than mere alarm or domination displays.

We know that non-human animals also have accents (even fish), and that dogs pick up a regional accent that riffs off the accent of their human guardians.

As intelligent machines help us to understand our cousins, perhaps we will finally be obliged to acknowledge their suffering.