Jeffrey T. Reed

Reed illustrates how little wild mammal biomass remains compared with humans and livestock, arguing the real challenge is preserving wildness itself.

“If your body represented the total weight of all the world's land mammals today, your right forearm would be what's left of the wild ones”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 48:47

Reed speculates that wolves' bark-howl, combining an alarm with a location call, may be a basic form of combinatorial meaning or recursion.

“Is this a basic form of recursion or combinatorial meaning? And recursion is what most linguists would say today is what's unique about human languages”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 42:07

Reed cites researcher Kira Cassidy's finding that wolves estimate rival pack size from howls and decide whether to retreat or approach.

“wolves can count or estimate the number of wolves howling in a rival pack. And they make a decision”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 39:55

Reed says decoding wolf vocalizations will take so long that he expects to die before younger biologists fully do it.

“I'll be dead by the time the younger biologists really start decoding all of this information”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 36:28

Reed argues that urbanization is eroding human vocabulary for nature, and a 'digital wild' of recordings can reconnect people to it.

“Human language across the globe is losing its words and grammar for nature”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 49:25

Reed says the Yellowstone recorders captured over 200,000 hours of audio, far more than a person could listen to.

“we've recorded over 200,000 hours, which would take me roughly 50 years to listen to”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 31:04

Reed says the recording devices are being built partly to locate gunshots and help law enforcement combat poaching in national parks.

“one of the reasons we're building these devices is to locate gunshots on the landscape and help law enforcement protect these resources for the public”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 49:03

Reed argues AI is a useful tool for studying animal behavior but will not produce a translator for wolf language.

“I don't foresee a Google Translate for wolfish, right? Because what you're really trying to do is get in the mind of a wolf”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 48:09

Reed says wolves in Yellowstone die mostly at the hands of other wolves, whereas outside protected areas humans are the main cause of death.

“The number one cause of a death in Yellowstone is another wolf. Outside of Yellowstone, in non-protected areas, it's humans”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 43:32

Reed says wolf 907 lived to 11, far beyond the Yellowstone average, and holds the park record for most litters.

“She lived 11 years, and the average age of a wolf in Yellowstone National Park is about three and a half years”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 42:31

Reed says his team is working with Google DeepMind to estimate pack size from chorus-howl recordings alone.

“we're working with Google DeepMind to see if we can count wolves just from their chorus howl”

TED Radio Hour: Can curiosity save the wild? (Oct 30, 2026) · Listen from 39:41