One of the biggest research goals of scientists studying animal communication is to one day be fully capable of communicating with other creatures, as fluently as we can communicate with other humans.

While we’ve attempted to teach human language to other animals, like apes who have been taught sign language, it’s not quite the same thing as making a decipherable translation of another animal’s language.

But now, a breakthrough. A team of researchers at Virginia Tech have managed to decode the language of honey bees in such a way that will allow other scientists across the globe to interpret the insects’ highly sophisticated and complex communications, reports Phys.org.

It’s a veritable Rosetta Stone for honey bee linguistics, and it’s a universal translator, applicable across honey bee subspecies the world over.

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