In the animated movie Up, a boisterous dog wears an electronic collar that translates his doggy thoughts into English words. “My master made me this collar,” he tells his new acquaintances. “He is a good and smart master and he made me this collar so that I may talk — SQUIRREL!”
In fiction, it’s a familiar piece of technology, a tool that can decode animals’ squeaks, meows, clicks and such into understandable human language. The sci-fi trope works in both directions. In the cartoon Rick and Morty, for instance, a translator lets Morty, a human boy, eavesdrop on squirrels that are running a worldwide cabal of crime. Their fast, cute little