The real science behind the mind-melding world of Hoppers | Scientific American

March 8, 2026 3 min read Add Us On Google Add 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 . ©Disney Warning: This post contains spoilers. 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—or “hops”—her consciousness into a robot beaver’s 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. 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. 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. On supporting science journalism 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. But the central premise of the movie—could humans one day transfer their consciousness into a robot and/or decode animal communication—is more based in scientific reality than you might think. First, it’s important to know that scientists don’t collectively agree on what consciousness is or how it works. But there are elements of Hoppers that reflect real consciousness research happening today. 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. “But what can be done right now is experience,” he says. In Muotri’s lab, he and his colleagues are working to “teach” 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’s worth of experiences, he says, and transfer them to a computer or another brain. But whether an individual’s consciousness could ever be transferred, into an animal brain no less, is another question. For that to be possible, consciousness would have to be made up of “informational patterns” that could be transferred to an animal brain “without losing what makes them you and what makes them human,” says Eric Schwitzgebel, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. “That is highly implausible but not inconceivable.” So the scientific jury is out on how Hoppers portrays consciousness as transferrable. But what about decoding animal communication ? 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 . “Most of them are saying [things like], ‘This is my territory,’ ‘Come mate with me,’ ‘There’s a predator,’” Kershenbaum explains. “I wouldn’t call that language. And certainly, that’s not what is portrayed in talking animal movies,” he says. 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 “consciousness,” scientists don’t all agree on what constitutes “language.” 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. 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. “Sperm whales have highly complex vocalization we’re learning, and that’s probably ind