Could somebody with an Android phone please determine whether they went all the way through with building an Android app? It appears you can only search the marketplace from a handset.
You can choose the Target animal (e.g. Guinea pig), press the listen button which "listens" for four seconds and outputs translations like "I could really do with an extension. This place could use some wooden decking." and "What is that thing anyway? Can I eat it?"
What's even funnier about it is that animals do indeed use sound to communicate and that this application is both theoretically and technically feasible.
Animals do not emit sounds for the sake of emitting sounds, they do so with specific intentions, desires, and goals, and as a result of specific systems that have developed towards the end of a complex system of communication involving vocal and auditory mechanisms, sound waves, and cognitive elements giving the capacity to process and generate these patterns of sound.
It's funny to me because I know that some people would look at this application and think of it as a hilarious joke: "Understand animal sounds? Ha Ha Ha good one Google! As if! Chinese Room! Hurf Durf! IMPOSSIBLE!"
It's also funny to me because I know that some hackers will look at this and be inspired to spend their spare cycles researching and developing this application, and wind up making a small fortune when they put it on the app store.
It's also funny to me because I suspect that some crafty googlers have already done this and are using the video and google's reputation for funny April Fools Day Jokes as a viral marketing tactic for their April Fool's Day Day-After joke, where they release the fully functional application, having developed it during their allocated "pet project" time.
Animal communication is definitely very complex. They all have their own language and it's often not just oral.
I've read an interesting theory that cats meow a lot at us humans because they see that we don't perceive their body language well enough. Out of frustration and because they see and hear that we speak a lot they adapt.
We're not to the point where we are able to translate live human communication smoothly. Even contextual text translation is terrible (Google translate).
I guess we're a long way from being able to translate animal communication effectively but I think it's a very intersting subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I24bSteJpw