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March 8, 2026<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Hoppers is a delight. But is it scientifically possible?<\/p>\n Consciousness and animal communications experts weigh in on whether the mind-melding science in Hoppers could ever be possible<\/p>\n By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron<\/span><\/p>\n A still from the film Hoppers.<\/p>\n Warning: This post contains spoilers.<\/p>\n Hoppers is as chaotic as it is delightful. The latest animated comedy from Disney and Pixar, the movie centers on 19-year-old Mabel, who transfers\u2014or \u201chops\u201d\u2014her consciousness into a robot beaver\u2019s body, giving her the ability to talk to animals. On a mission to save a beloved patch of nature from a construction project in the fictional town of Beaverton, the beaver-bodied Mabel inadvertently sparks an uprising among the animals that live there. Think Avatar meets Freaky Friday meets FernGully: The Last Rainforest.<\/p>\n Mabel encounters a charming cast of animal characters, including upbeat beaver king George (voiced by Bobby Moynihan), a sinister insect queen (Meryl Streep) and her caterpillar-turned-butterfly successor Titus (Dave Franco), who band together to stop Beaverton mayor Jerry Generazzo (voiced by Jon Hamm) from building a highway through their wilderness home.<\/p>\n The film takes a lot of imaginative liberties: in one scene, a shark gets lifted out of the ocean by seagulls; in another, animals communicate with humans via emoji.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n But the central premise of the movie\u2014could humans one day transfer their consciousness into a robot and\/or decode animal communication\u2014is more based in scientific reality than you might think.<\/p>\n First, it\u2019s important to know that scientists don\u2019t collectively agree on what consciousness is or how it works. But there are elements of Hoppers that reflect real consciousness research happening today.<\/p>\n Nobody has successfully transferred consciousness from one nervous system to another or shown that this is possible, says Alysson Muotri, a professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who is a pioneer in brain organoid research. \u201cBut what can be done right now is experience,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In Muotri\u2019s lab, he and his colleagues are working to \u201cteach\u201d brain organoids to sense light in a similar way to human eyes. In theory, it might be one day be possible to mimic an entire brain\u2019s worth of experiences, he says, and transfer them to a computer or another brain.<\/p>\n But whether an individual\u2019s consciousness could ever be transferred, into an animal brain no less, is another question.<\/p>\n For that to be possible, consciousness would have to be made up of \u201cinformational patterns\u201d that could be transferred to an animal brain \u201cwithout losing what makes them you and what makes them human,\u201d says Eric Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. \u201cThat is highly implausible but not inconceivable.\u201d<\/p>\n So the scientific jury is out on how Hoppers portrays consciousness as transferrable. But what about decoding animal communication?<\/p>\n Most animals are likely not conveying complex thoughts when they communicate, let alone planning an antihuman uprising as in Hoppers, says Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and author of the book Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication. \u201cMost of them are saying [things like], \u2018This is my territory,\u2019 \u2018Come mate with me,\u2019 \u2018There\u2019s a predator,\u2019\u201d Kershenbaum explains. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call that language. And certainly, that\u2019s not what is portrayed in talking animal movies,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Some animals, such as parrots or bonobos, may have the capability to learn language, but whether they possess it themselves and use it to communicate with other animals is a matter of debate, Kershenbaum says. And as is frustratingly the case with \u201cconsciousness,\u201d scientists don\u2019t all agree on what constitutes \u201clanguage.\u201d<\/p>\n What scientists can do is listen to animal sounds and correlate them to observed behaviors. Some researchers are also using artificial intelligence to try and better decode animal communication.<\/p>\n On such group is Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), which is using AI to listen to and decipher meaning encoded in the vocalizations of sperm whales. In 2025 some members of the group published a study suggesting that when the click sounds made by sperm whales are sped up, they resemble vowels.<\/p>\n \u201cSperm whales have highly complex vocalization we\u2019re learning, and that\u2019s probably indicative that their inner lives are in complex as well,\u201d says Ga\u0161per Begu\u0161, Project CETI\u2019s linguistics lead and an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.<\/p>\n Begu\u0161 hopes research like Project CETI will help to deepen humans\u2019 appreciation of the natural world, much like Mabel\u2019s foray into the animal world in Hoppers.<\/p>\n \u201cAnimals are much closer to us than we used to think,\u201d Begu\u0161 says. \u201cWe think we\u2019re the only ones with language, or the only ones with complex thought. But that might not be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" March 8, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Hoppers is a delight. But is it scientifically possible? Consciousness and animal communications experts weigh in on whether the mind-melding science in Hoppers could ever be possible By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron A still from the film Hoppers. Warning: This post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[23637,23636,455,516,550],"class_list":{"0":"post-46163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-hoppers","9":"tag-mindmelding","10":"tag-real","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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