The real science behind Hopper’s mind-based world

Containers is a delight. But is it scientifically possible?

By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron

Containers is as chaotic as it is delightful. The latest animated comedy from Disney and Pixar, the film centers on 19-year-old Mabel, who transfers — or “jumps” — her consciousness into the body of a robotic beaver, giving her the ability to talk to animals. On a mission to save a beloved piece of nature from a construction project in the fictional town of Beaverton, beaver body Mabel inadvertently sparks a riot among the animals that live there. I think Avatar meetings Terrible Friday meetings FernGully: The Last Rainforest.

Mabel meets a charming cast of animal characters, including the optimistic beaver king George (voiced by Bobby Moynihan), a sinister bug queen (Meryl Streep) and her caterpillar-like-butterfly successor Titus (Dave Franco), who band together to stop Beaverton Mayor Jerry Generazzo from building a wilderness Highway Hammer (voice).

The film takes many imaginative liberties: in one scene, a shark is lifted out of the sea by seagulls; in another, animals communicate with humans via emoji.

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But the central premise of the film—can humans one day transfer their consciousness to a robot and/or decode animal communication—is more grounded in scientific reality than you might think.

First, it is important to know that scientists do not collectively agree on what consciousness is or how it works. But there are elements of Containers which reflects real consciousness research happening today.

No one has successfully transferred consciousness from one nervous system to another or shown that this is possible, says Alysson Muotri, 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 laboratory, he and his colleagues are working to “teach” brain organoids to sense light in a similar way to human eyes. In theory, it may one day be possible to imitate an entire brain’s experiences, he says, and transfer them to a computer or another brain.

But whether an individual’s consciousness can ever be transferred to an animal brain no less is another question.

For that to be possible, consciousness must consist of “patterns of information” that can be transferred to an animal brain “without losing what makes them you and what makes them human,” says Eric Schwitzgebel, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. “It’s highly unlikely, but not inconceivable.”

So the scientific jury is out on how Containers portrays consciousness as transferable. But what about decoding animal communication?

Most animals probably don’t convey complex thoughts when they communicate, let alone plan an anti-human rebellion like i 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 say (like), ‘This is my territory,’ ‘Befriend me,’ ‘It’s a predator,'” Kershenbaum explains. “I don’t want to call it language. And certainly, that is not what is portrayed in talking animal films,” he says.

Some animals, such as parrots or bonobos, may have the ability to learn language, but whether they possess it themselves and use it to communicate with other animals is a matter of debate, says Kershenbaum. And as is frustrating with ‘consciousness’, not all researchers agree on what constitutes ‘language’.

What researchers can do is listen to animal sounds and correlate them with observed behaviour. Some researchers are also using artificial intelligence to try to better decode animal communication.

On one such group is Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), which uses artificial intelligence to listen to and decipher the meaning encoded in the vocalizations of sperm whales. In 2025, some members of the group published a study suggesting that as the click sounds made by sperm whales increase, they resemble vowels.

“Sperm whales have very complex vocalizations that we learn, and that is probably an indication that their inner lives are also complex,” says Gašper Beguš, CETI’s linguistics project leader and associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Beguš hopes research like Project CETI will help deepen people’s understanding of the natural world, much like Mabel’s foray into the animal world in Containers.

“Animals are much closer to us than we used to think,” says Beguš. “We think we are the only ones with language, or the only ones with complex thoughts. But that may not be the case.”

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