Scientists win US$100,000 in 2026 Coller Dolittle prize for latest step forward in interspecies communication research

• The Coller Dolittle Challenge for Two-Way Interspecies Communication has awarded its annual US$100,000 prize to a scientist who has discovered that zebra finches classify their calls according to meaning more so than acoustics.

• Dr. Irene Pepperberg has received a Lifetime Achievement Award for her ground-breaking research on grey parrot communication.

• The next round of applications for the Coller Dolittle Prize is now open until the deadline, 30th August 2026.

(London, 26^th June) – The Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University are today announcing the winner of the 2026 prize from the Coller Dolittle Challenge for Two-Way Interspecies Communication. This year’s US$100,000 prize has been awarded to Dr. Julie E Elie, from the Theunissen Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, for her discovery that zebra finches classify their calls according to meaning more so than acoustics.

Using AI machine learning and detailed observations of animal behavior, Dr. Julie Elie and her team investigated the acoustic features of zebra finches’ vocalizations and created a “dictionary” classifying zebra finches' vocalizations into 11 categories or call-types, with meanings such as aggression, hunger or bonding. Elie took her research one step further, carrying out an experiment that tested whether the birds agreed with her classification. She trained zebra finches to press buttons which played her categorized call-types, each day rewarding only one of the call-types with seeds. The birds rapidly learned which call-type was being rewarded, waiting for their reward at the end of the playback, and interrupted non-rewarded call-types.

But the truly remarkable scientific advancement was discovered after the categorization exercise, when Elie and her team investigated the errors that birds made when seeking the rewarded call-type. Zebra finches made classification mistakes on calls with shared meaning that could not be explained by how similar-sounding these call-types were. For instance, the birds mistook long-distance contact calls and short-distance contact calls, which are acoustically very different. But, they never mistook a short contact call with a short alarm call, which have very similar acoustic patterns but entirely distinct meanings. As such, the study reveals that call perception elicits a mental imagery of the meaning of call-types, rather than triggering a reflexive response.

The prize was presented during an event on 25^th June with four shortlisted teams of researchers from the US, France and Switzerland presenting their remarkable discoveries on communication with African striped mice, chimpanzees and bonobos. AI tools were central to the finalists’ studies, enabling them to analyze larger data sets at greater speed, and to decode bioacoustic patterns which are inaudible to human hearing.

Dr. Julie Elie said:

“Our research shows that exciting scientific discoveries come from mistakes. It’s been a fascinating collaborative exercise to ask the zebra finches questions about their vocalizations. The fact that, sometimes, the birds get the classification of their own calls wrong has enabled us to gain huge insight into their perceptions and mental imagery.

“But, there is so much more to be done. Beyond developing the right algorithm to interpret animal vocalizations, we must coordinate the acoustic with the visual. I am excited for the development of robots to mimic the movements and posture of the species we’re interested in. But in the meantime, I’m delighted that I have been recognized by the Coller Dolittle Committee for our team’s contributions to the goal of two-way interspecies communication. I am really grateful to all the people that contributed to this project and to the Jeremy Coller Foundation for making this recognition possible.”

During the event, the Coller Dolittle Prize Committee also awarded a special Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Irene Pepperberg in recognition of her landmark work on two-way symbolic communication with grey parrots. The event also featured a keynote speech from Professor Ofer Tchernichovski, Hunter College, City University of New York, titled “Decoding Animal Talk: A virtual reality system reveals how songbirds engage with virtual partners”. A recording of the presentations will be available soon on: https://coller-dolittle-24.sites.tau.ac.il/

Jeremy Coller said:

“Congratulations to Dr. Julie Elie, a well-deserved winner of this year’s Prize. From primates to rodents, from jungles to deserts, down on the ground and up in the sky, today’s finalists are all pushing the frontiers of animal communication. While the ultimate goal of achieving genuine two-way communication remains tantalizingly out of reach, scientists are bringing us all one step closer to what I am convinced is now inevitable. AI is accelerating so fast, I have absolute conviction we’ll crack the code by 2030 – a breakthrough that will benefit humans and our fellow animals the world over and give a long overdue voice to the voiceless.”

Professor Yossi Yovel, Tel Aviv University and Chair of the Coller Dolittle Challenge, said:

“This year’s finalists have raised the scientific bar of the Coller Dolittle Challenge even further. We have seen a clear transition from studying individual animal “words” to the study of “sentences”. Dr. Julie Elie’s research excelled in all domains. Her study has gone beyond decoding zebra finch’s communication and has begun to answer whether these patterns identified by scientists are actually relevant and meaningful to the birds. On this trajectory, we are accelerating at pace towards two-way interspecies communication.”

Jonathan Birch, Professor of Philosophy, London School of Economics & Politics (LSE) and a member of the scientific panel of judges said:

“Dr. Julie Elie has been doing absolutely phenomenal work across more than 15 years, not just building up a dictionary of the 11 "core words" of the zebra finch's vocabulary but also asking the finches themselves, through ingenious experimental techniques, whether she's got the meanings right. It's a stunning example of how to move rigorously from recording thousands of calls to understanding their meanings.”

Through the Coller Dolittle Challenge, a prize of US$100,000 is awarded annually for the most promising research seeking to develop an algorithm for communication with animals. Submissions for the 2027 prize are now open. The research must adhere to the following criteria:

• Use non-invasive approaches.

• Demonstrate communication in more than one context using the animal’s endogenous communication signals.

• Show a measurable response from the animal.

The deadline for submissions is 30^th August 2026. Full details and guidelines for submission can be found on the website.

The Coller Dolittle Challenge also offers a Grand Prize – of either a US$10 million equity investment or a US$500,000 cash prize – which will be awarded when the animal communicates independently with the research team without recognizing that it is communicating with humans.

Notes to editors:

The Coller Dolittle Challenge for Two-Way Interspecies Communication:

This global initiative is administered by Tel Aviv University and chaired by Professor Yossi Yovel, a noted scientist in the field. Professor Yovel chairs an expert scientific panel of judges including Professor Raja Giryes (Computer Scientist, TAU), Professor Jonathan Birch (Professor of Philosophy, LSE), Professor Mirjam Knörnschild (Biologist, Frei Uni.), Professor Elodie Floriane Mandel-Briefer (Ecologist, University of Copenhagen), Professor Arik Kershenbaum (Zoologist, University of Cambridge) and ProfessorAmir Teicher (History of Science, TAU), among others. The challenge is operated on an open-access basis, with data made available to the scientific community for the advancement of this field of study. This marks the second year of the Challenge. Last Year’s winner was a research team led by Laela Sayigh from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, whose team included Peter Tyack from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Vincent Janik from the University of St. Andrews, Frants Jensen from Aarhus University, Katie McHugh and Randall Wells from Brookfield Zoo Chicago’s Sarasota Dolphin Research Program. The team discovered the first evidence in dolphins of a possible language-like communication system, with shared, context-specific meanings.

More information about the Challenge can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982223008485

https://coller-dolittle-24.sites.tau.ac.il/

About The Coller Foundation

The Jeremy Coller Foundation addresses the consequences of intensive animal agriculture for human health, the environment, animal welfare and global sustainability with the aim of supporting the transition to a more sustainable food system. The Foundation’s flagship initiatives include The FAIRR Initiative (Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return), the fastest growing investor network representing $90+ trillion assets, raising awareness of the material risks and opportunities around intensive animal agriculture; the Coller Animal Law Forum (CALF), which aims to accelerate law and policy globally in this area; and The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The Jeremy Coller Foundation also supports a number of initiatives in business and venture education and pensions innovation worldwide.