What Jeffrey T. Reed has said about Wolf communication

4 quotes · 1 episode · Oct 30, 2026

Jeffrey T. Reed, Computational linguist, founder of Grizzly Systems and the Cry Wolf Project, has been quoted on Wolf communication 4 times in 1 episode of TED Radio Hour, most recently on October 30, 2026. Each quote below is verbatim and links to the moment it was said.

In their words

  • 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 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 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 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

Episodes

  • Can curiosity save the wild?

    TED Radio Hour · Oct 30, 2026 · 50 min

    Manoush Zomorodi talks with conservationist Maya Higa about livestreamed wildlife sanctuaries and computational linguist Jeffrey Reed about using AI to study Yellowstone wolf howls.

Jeffrey T. Reed on other topics