General Chat

THERE was a time when we thought humans were special in so many ways. Now we know better. We are not the only species that feels emotions, empathises with others or abides by a moral code. Neither are we the only ones with personalities, cultures and the ability to design and use tools. Yet we have steadfastly clung to the notion that one attribute, at least, makes us unique: we alone have the capacity for language.

Alas, it turns out we are not so special in this respect either. Key to the revolutionary reassessment of our talent for communication is the way we think about language itself. Where once it was seen as a monolith, a discrete and singular entity, today scientists find it is more productive to think of language as a suite of abilities. Viewed this way, it becomes apparent that the component parts of language - everything from gesticulation and babbling to meaning and syntax - are not as unique as the whole. In fact, a boom in research into animal cognition and communication has gradually picked off most items on the list one by one.

Take gesture, arguably the starting point for language. Until recently it was considered uniquely human - but not any more. Mike Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and others have compiled a list of gestures observed in monkeys, gibbons, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans, which reveals that gesticulation plays a large role in their communication (Gesture, vol 5, p 39). Ape gestures can involve touch, vocalising or eye movement, and individuals wait until they have another ape's attention before making visual or auditory gestures. If their gestures go unacknowledged, they will often repeat them or touch the recipient.

An experiment carried out in 2006 by Erica Cartmill and Richard Byrne from the University of St Andrews in the UK underscores the similarity between the way humans and apes use gesture (Current Biology, vol 17, p 1345). They got a person to sit on a chair with some highly desirable food, such as banana, to one side of them, and some bland food, such as celery, to the other. The orang-utans, who could see the person and the food from their enclosures, gestured at their human partners to encourage them to push the desirable food their way. If the person feigned incomprehension and offered the bland food, the animals would change their gestures - just as humans would in a similar situation. If the human seemed to understand while being somewhat confused, giving only half the preferred food, the apes would repeat and exaggerate their gestures - again in exactly the same way a human would.

Such findings highlight the fact that the gestures of non-human primates are not merely innate reflexes but are learned, flexible and under voluntary control - all characteristics that are considered prerequisites for human-like communication. The fact that we can interpret ape gestures also suggests that there is a shared evolutionary basis for gesticulation in humans and other primates. The innate similarities were demonstrated by Joanna Blake from York University in Toronto, Canada, who examined the literature on the gestures of human infants aged between 9 and 15 months and that on gestures by apes of various ages. She found that both human babies and apes use similar gestures to make requests, such as extending a hand to beg for food and raising both arms to be picked up and carried. Both use their whole hand to point. Infants and apes alike make the same gestures of protest, pushing someone away or turning away themselves while shaking their heads. They also emote by stamping their feet, flapping their arms and rocking. When they want someone to do something, both take another individual's hand and place it on the object they want to manipulate.

As well as gesturing, pre-linguistic infants babble, and it turns out they are not alone in this either - dolphins, and even songbirds, do it too. At about five months babies start to make their first speech sounds, which some researchers believe contain a random selection of all the phonemes humans can produce. But as children learn the language of their parents, they narrow their sound repertoire to fit the model to which they are exposed, producing just the sounds of their native language, as well as its classic intonation patterns. Indeed, they lose their polymath talents so effectively that they are ultimately unable to produce some sounds - think about the difficulty Japanese speakers have pronouncing the English "l" and "r".

Dolphin calves also pass through a babbling phase. Laurance Doyle from the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, Brenda McCowan from the University of California at Davis and their colleagues analysed the complexity of baby dolphin sounds and found it looked remarkably like that of babbling infants, in that the young dolphins had a much wider repertoire of sound than adults. This suggests that they practise the sounds of their species, much as human babies do, before they begin to put them together in the way characteristic of mature dolphins of their species (Journal of Comparative Psychology, vol 116, p 116).

Hello Len :-)

Can I just say, you've posted some really interesting threads of late.

Just wanted to thank you.....

Hi Len,

As always a very thought provoking thread.

Aileen xxx

I am not very well educated but have always thought that comunication was not just about speach. How else would we understand exactly what our pets want, and how they understand us.My cats tell me in lots of ways what they want, and they even know whether I am in good,or bad mood feeling unwell, or fancy a play. And, they definately know how to get me out of bed in the morning!!!

Very interesting, From my own observation of all types of animals and birds, they all have a rudimentary language and definite personalities. I dont really know why I still eat meat, only from habit I suspect.

In an old thread (Ghosts in the Head - or Bats in the Belfry) I made reference to “blind sight” which is perception directly by the mind instead of the usual receptors (eyes, nose, ears etc). Examples from scientific studies include blind persons who, when having something held out towards them (e.g. a wine glass), locate the object in space and form their hand in a suitable shape to receive the item. In the non-human world, a blind monkey was observed to pick up currants from the floor and catch a passing fly. The monkey’s senses of smell and hearing, though greatly improved by utter reliance upon them, would not have been adequate. There are many examples but this necessarily has to be a very brief – because typing with one finger is a slow and laborious process.

It is a fact that modern humans potentially retain faculties that have been more fully exploited in other species. In accordance with Darwinian Theory, any species will evolve faculties which enhance its survival chances. Homo sapiens is still evolving, perhaps into different sub-species as once modern humans did from the other anthropoid apes. Had it not been for the advent of communications and transport the differences between races of humans may have become much more developed.

Other species – birds, sharks, porpoises, snakes, and octopi etc. have all manner of hard-to-believe senses that enable them to thrive. They can perceive what we cannot in the electro-magnetic radiation spectrum including infra-red and ultra-violet light, maybe more. Snakes can “see” heat sources and “taste” smells. Cats do the last trick too. Most cat owners (if one can own a cat) have observed their pets to first sniff the air then "gape" allowing the smell particles to waft overtheir taste buds.

Cetaceans (porpoises etc) can see in ultra sound as do many other creatures. They may also detect and navigate by magnetic lines of force. Ancient humans seemed to do that too and mapped out the magnetic lines on land, later dubbed “ley lines”. Sharks and their cousins can pick up electrical auras from other living creatures, even when their prey is buried under the sea floor. Dolphins and porpoises have a similar skill but by using sonar. So it would not be surprising if humans too (or some of them) possessed these uncanny capabilities in some form or another. Who is to say if a person can or cannot actually perceive the electrical force field surrounding each of us and call it an aura? It is known to be there and is detectable and measurable with instruments.

Hello Len, yes, I agree with you........although I have, for a very long time, respected the way animals behave.......and especially, working with horses for many years........realised how sensitive and intelligent an animal they are.....

Along with elephants, they can hear and smell and see far much better than we can.......they can understand our body language, and have a body language of their own.......I spent many hours watching them interact in a group.......and they will also follow a lead mare in a herd in the wild, just like elephants..... I could go on but if you watch animal behaviour programmes you will get the idea.....

We think we are clever, but animals can understand us, whatever language we speak......they do it by watching our inborn body language and tone of voice and gestures.......how many of us can say that we are listening to our pets.....

sally

Here is a snippet of information (picked up from The New York Times): Since the 1970s, animal behaviourists have trained apes to make requests by using sign-language or symbols and acousticians have detected that whales and elephants make sub-sonic calls, mice and small animals and fish make ultra sonic sounds, and suspicions have arisen that animals may have more to say than humans realized. More recently, German researchers reported in the journal Science that Rico, a border collie , could not only fetch 200 objects by name , but could also learn the name of a new object by inference if it was in a group of other objects he already knew.

Dr Emily Savage-Rumbaugh who has worked with apes for 25 years reported that some bonobo chimps she works with at Georgia State University have been talked to by humans since birth. By pointing to symbols, Kanzi, the best among the bonobos, can form sentences or can hear and act upon English words such as “get the tomato that is in the microwave” and “fetch the red toy”. Other studies of chimp communication by signing reveal that they use expletives. It follows then that other primates have language, including syntax and grammar capabilities even though they do not have the biological apparatus for vocalizing in human-speak. The young of these apes learn sign-lanquage from their parents rather than from humans. A very young orang-utan quickly moved in to start operating a touch-screen computer after watching its mother complete a session. It had learned from observation alone.

Francine Patterson who has worked for nearly 30 years with Koko, a gorilla, said Koko could “speak as well as a 5-year old child” using sign language and modulate her vocabulary of nearly a 1000 signs by raising her eyebrows (a very human trait) to indicate questions, and making moves “that would be described as grammatical” by users of sign-language. In an article on the human propensity for lying, by the Science Editor Sunday Times (20/11/2005), it was noted that other primates may manipulate the truth. An example was Koko the gorilla: “after ripping a steel sink from its moorings, the ape – famous for using sign language – signed to claim that her friend the cat had done the damage”

Gorillas are born with an international sign language of gestures that they use to communicate, scientists have discovered. Researchers from St Andrews University in Scotland found gorillas using the same signs despite being born and raised on different continents. The team watched four groups of gorillas in Africa and Europe and found they had a repertoire of more than 100 distinct gestures, 40 of which were common to every animal. About 160 gorillas – 130 living in the wild and 30 in zoos - were monitored. More than 5,200 hand gestures were observed in a month. Richard Byrne, the co-author of the study, said: “Social transmission did not play a role. We conclude that the great majority of intentional gestures are universal.
The findings are published in the journal “Animal Cognition”

Linguists have been accused of moving the standards of their definition of language ever higher, so it can never be met. “They will always deny that animals can talk” Dr Savage-Rumbaugh states “because it doesn’t fit comfortably with their view of the universe. One animal that can speak our language, normally in mimicry, is not a mammal but a bird. Experiments with parrots have indicated that they also understand what they are saying to some degree, if taught, and can respond intelligently. (google: Alex the African Gray Parrot) A technique in training parrots, by having another person present who will compete for the teacher’s attention, stimulating the parrot to greater efforts, is now being used in teaching autistic children. I sometimes think "If nothing in nature has no purpose, why have animals been endowed with vocalisation if not to communicate with one another". Because humans do not understand such vocalisation does not mean it is meaningless

Assuming some animals can understand and respond to human lanquage , yet no humans ( Dr Doolittle aside) have been known to understand and respond to an animal language - what does this tell us about humans?

It is illogical to assume that animals do not have consciousness. All animals (including humans) evolved from a common source and it is not sensible (with apologies to Fr. Teilhard de Chardin) to assume that humans, at one particular point in their evolution, had a "soul" deposited into them. Ever seen a chimp examining a pimple on his face in a mirror? It’s an incredibly human thing to do which requires meditational thought.. If they have consciousness, why not life after death and re-incarnation?

We're only the dominant species in our view!!
How do we know the view of other species?

Whites were the dominant species in humanity for many years - why? Because we didn't understand the language of the (eg) African, and whites regarded themselves as dominant because of this!
They regarded their religion as dominant, their use/abuse of resources as dominant , which has led to the misuse of resources.

When all the resources 'needed' by the West to survive are depleted, the 'lost' tribes of (eg) the Amazon will still survive.
Not so clever are we?

The press reporting on the tsunami disaster in Shri Lanka, where there is abundant wildlife, detailed the effect on the region’s animals. “The strange thing is we have not recorded any dead animals” although the human death toll exceeds 22,000. An aerial surveillance by air force helicopters spotted abundant wildlife but not one animal carcass although many human bodies. Dr R.Sheldrake, a biologist, said “many animals seem to sense when a disaster or catastrophe is about to occur. Cats are said to vacate the scene up to 12 hours before an earthquake whilst dogs would bark frantically. An animal behaviourist said the Chinese routinely take changes in animal behaviour seriously as signalling an earthquake or volcanic eruption

Maggie
I fear you are being somewhat optimistic. The tribes of the Amazon and other remote areas will not survive as "civilised" man will have destroyed their habitat. The Amazonian rain forests are being felled at an increasing rate. Likewise, no wild animal life will survive either. Only today I viewed a tv documentary demonstrating how we are emptying the oceans of fish and other creatures, by over-fishing and polution.

Sadly, when all other life forms are extinct, mankind will be doomed. At the present rate of population increase, the planet will be unable to accommodate the human race beyond a limited period.

Perhaps homo sapiens needs to be culled? But who and by whom?

Cassidy
Perhaps insects are the dominant species? No doubt cockroaches (and maybe rats) will survive after humans are gone - which some think will be by the year 2500. Maybe bacteria will have to start the evolution process all over again.

When I had a heart attack in 1997 and was carted off to hospital in an ambulance, our cat (who never slept anywhere except in a downstairs room) decided to sleep on my bed till I came home. She did the same again the following year when I was hospitalized again. What went on in her mind, I wonder? She was 16 when she died and during her life-time we regularly had mutual admiration sessions when we gazed into each others eyes and she did her best to communicate before regretfully giving up as I was too thick to understand her language although she obviously understood much of mine.. The writer Beverley Nichols observed that cats have one language for their own kind and a totally different set of vocalizations which they use on humans. When visiting my brother-in-law's farm I was taken to see a newly born foal. Politely, I said hello to the mare, the foal's mother but made no move towards her foal., and held out my hand for her to sniff which she did. She then moved closer and gently held the side of her muzzle, which was incredibly soft, silky and warm, against my cheek for a few seconds. I found that a profoundly moving experience and really felt that I had communicated with an animal who was letting me know she found me ok

Red the lurcher was an inmate of Battersea Dog’s Home. When the staff had left for the day, someone was regularly letting selected dogs out of their cages from where they went to the kitchens and wreaked havoc having midnight feasts. Members of staff were completely baffled. It was even thought a ghost may be at work (there is a history of haunting at the establishment) so CCTV cameras were installed to solve the mystery and excellent pictures were recorded of Red, using his nose to lift the handle of the bolt whilst standing on tip-toes, then deftly using his teeth to ease back the bolt. Once free, he made a beeline for his mates’ cages and repeated the process. This was widely reported in the national press at the time. One mystery solved - leaving a greater mystery: What powers do dogs possess of which man is totally ignorant?

While it is asserted by zoologists and others that only humans have the power of speech, many pet owners would dispute this and credit their fellow creatures not only with powers of communication but also of near-psychic abilities. Rupert Sheldrake, well-known biologist, has documented numerous instances of dogs who sense when their master/mistress is heading home from work - or when someone is thinking of taking them for a walk or when a visit to the vet is imminent (my cat does this) and promptly hides. They are also able to anticipate natural disasters such as avalanches and earthquakes hours in advance.

Until recently, scientists dismissed such phenomena as co-incidences but are increasingly being beset by hard evidence of dogs’ uncanny diagnostic skills. There is now indisputable proof that canines whose owners suffer from diabetes or epilepsy can warn them nearly half an hour beforehand of an imminent fit.
A researcher at Amersham Hospital in Bucks has recently published in the British Medical Journal, reporting a dog’s talent for distinguishing those with a bladder tumour from those without. At the Hearing Dogs for the Deaf training centre, dogs are currently being trained to detect impending epileptic fits.
The extraordinary acuteness of a dog’s sense of smell, which is way beyond that which is biologically feasible, is not the entire answer as dogs seem to possess an intuitive sense of something being wrong. A consultant at Kings College Hospital, London, reported on a woman patient who had a small mole on her thigh and whose dog kept worrying at it, even trying to nibble it off until she went to her doctor about it. It proved to be an early melanoma. One instance was quoted where a dog picked up on a patient who has been cleared by the cancer unit. On re-checking, the dog was found to be correct. There are many other similar examples.

These days it is taken for granted that dogs have the ability to sniff out drugs, arms or even paper money (if in large quantities) and are routinely employed in doing so by.Customs & Inland Revenue.