Why This Matters

Understanding animals can change how we treat them.

Technology can help make animal communication more visible—and give people better information when deciding how to respond. Humans make decisions for animals every day: when to touch them, move them, train them, leave them alone, expose them to something new, seek professional help, or simply give them space. Those choices are better when we notice more of what the animal is communicating.

From “bad behavior” to information

A growl, freeze, head turn or retreat can be information before it becomes a problem. Better observation can help people ask what the behavior is communicating instead of immediately labeling it disobedience.

More room for consent and boundaries

Animals cannot explain discomfort in human language. Recognizing body language gives people more opportunities to respect avoidance, uncertainty and requests for distance.

More curiosity, less projection

We love anthropomorphizing our pets, and sometimes that is harmless fun. VeriBark aims to pair that emotional connection with closer attention to the animal's observable behavior.

Technology in service of animals

AI is often discussed in terms of making human life faster or more efficient. We are interested in another possibility: using it to expand what humans notice about other species.

Dogs are chapter one.

VeriBark starts with dogs because canine communication is richly studied and dogs share human homes at enormous scale. Cat Chat is next, followed by Hey Horse, birds, and species-specific tools for farmed animals. Each new experience will be built around the communication and behavioral science of that species.

See Cat Chat

A deeper read of each species.

Adding cats, horses and birds is one direction. The other is understanding each animal better than we do today, and that is where the data starts to do something science alone could not.

Signals nobody has written down yet

The ethogram today holds 133 signals drawn from decades of research. As the dataset grows, patterns can emerge from the data itself: small behaviors that reliably show up alongside well-understood ones. Each is a candidate for a new entry, reviewed by canine behavior experts before it is added.

Beyond video and audio

A dog's primary channel is scent, and no camera can see it. Combining behavioral signals with data like heart rate and, eventually, olfactory and pheromone sensing could bridge far more of the gap than video alone, and make wearables such as smart collars meaningfully more accurate.

From clips to the moment

We are working toward understanding that happens live, as it happens, rather than after you have hit upload. More on that when we are ready to share.

Your dog is already communicating

Notice more of what animals are already communicating.

First analysis freeiOS + Android6 app languages