While listening to a local radio program — something I do only while driving in my car — I heard an interesting interview with researcher Jeffrey Reed, the co-founder of The Cry Wolf Project, reportedly the world’s largest ‘bioacoustics study of wild wolves.’ Dr. Reed, who spent many years studying ancient human languages, hopes to use AI to ‘decode’ wolf language and find out what they’re saying to one another when they howl or bark or make other wolfish noises.
To most people, I suspect, the phrase “Cry Wolf” implies something other than trying to understand wolf howls. It’s more closely related to the moral, “A liar will not be believed, even when telling the truth.”
But “Cry Wolf” can mean different things to different people.
We care about wolves in Colorado. One way or the other. Love ’em or hate ’em. A slim majority of us voted in 2020 to reintroduce wolves into Colorado, a place where they’d been exterminated by the 1940s.
Reintroducing wolves is even more difficult than getting voter approval, however. So far, Colorado Parks & Wildlife have imported 10 wolves from Oregon and 15 wolves from Canada, and had plans to import another 50 over the next few years. But the USDA has forbidden CPW from getting more wolves from Canada — you know, Canada, that place that’s no longer our friends. And Washington State doesn’t want to provide any wolves. Nor do Montana and Idaho.
Of the 25 introduced so far, at least 9 have died already. It’s not easy being a wolf in Colorado. (Or a journalist, for that matter.)
When I got home, I looked up Dr. Reed’s TED Talk, which you can watch here.
But let’s get back to the idea of “Cry Wolf”.
You know the story. It’s one of Aesop’s fables, dating back to maybe 600 BC.
A Shepherd’s Boy, while attending his flock, used to divert himself by crying out, “the Wolf! the Wolf!” The Husbandmen in the adjoining grounds, thus alarmed, left their work and ran to his assistance, but finding that he was only sporting with their feelings, and bantering them, they resolved at last to take no notice of his alarms.
It was not long, however, before the Wolf really came, and the Boy bawled out “the Wolf! the Wolf!” as he had done before; but the men having been so often deceived, paid no attention to his cries, and the sheep were devoured without mercy.
A liar will not be believed, even when telling the truth.
Obviously, this is both a true story and a fable. It’s a fable because no one expects it to be true, but it’s true because, in fact, a liar will not be believed, even when telling the truth. Unless he’s part of the federal government. But even then, we might stop believing after a while.
This story hits home for me, because I often employ fables in my writing, and I try to make it glaringly apparent that I’m telling a true story by way fo telling a story that is not true. Whether my readers understand that, I cannot say. One can only hope.
Most of Aesop’s fables feature talking animals — rabbits, turtles, crows, foxes, mice — so we’re never fooled into thinking the stories are true, and thus we can immediately understand that they are, in fact, true. Only a few of the fables — like the Boy Who Cried Wolf — feature humans doing stupid things that we’d never want our children doing. But which they will do regardless.
Lately, certain scientists have been recording animal voices and running the sounds through computers, to try and decode animal communications. They’ve done this with, for instance, whales, bats, prairie dogs, songbirds, monkeys, and insects.
And now, wolves.
This is going to play havoc with Aesop’s fables, I fear. The Wolf that ate the Shepherd Boy’s sheep will instead stop and have a conversation with him, explaining the Balance of Nature and the important role played by apex predators. Who would ever believe that outrageous fable?
More importantly, if scientists — aided by computer software — are able to convince us that wolves can communicate vocally, the next thing you know, they will try to convince us that computer software can communicate verbally.
It’s all downhill from there.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.