Animal Communication 🐶 When the Dog starts to talk.
-
Wu Ming — 1 year ago(February 05, 2025 10:04 PM)
Here's the story of Balto.
And that made me remember to whom I belong.
We face hard times.
I changed the term
"Husky"
, cause those dogs are sled dogs, no
"Huskies"
.
Yah, a husky is a sled dog, but not every sled dog is a husky.
However, good dogs.
100 years ago, a Hero on four paws - How the sled dog
"Balto
" saved an entire village
In February 1925, dogs transported medicine to the remote village of Nome, preventing a diphtheria epidemic.
Dog
"Balto"
was celebrated as a hero - and ended up in a zoo.
Gunnar Kaasen and Balto
The situation seemed hopeless: at the beginning of 1925, diphtheria was raging in the remote village of Nome, Alaska, with a population of 1,400. Several children already died from the deadly infection.
And the medication in the local infirmary: expired.
The doctor in Nome feared an epidemic, imposed a quarantine, and ordered several hundred thousand units of a saving antidote.
….
….
https://www.geo.de/wissen/weltgeschichte/vor-100-jahren--schlittenhund--balto--rettete-ein-ganzes-dorf-35435630.html
February 03, 2025
There's more to the story.
However.
Gute Nacht. -
Wu Ming — 1 year ago(February 06, 2025 10:02 AM)
Clever Hans February 06, 2025 06:45 PM
Member since July 21, 2024
WTF.. they named a horse after me?!
"Nur Pferden gibt man den Gnadenschuss."
Coup de Grâce (strange French term)
And btw. not true.
Betimes you've to give the mercy shot to other species.
My quote referred to a great and sad US-American movie.
That was the title in my language, back-translated. -
Wu Ming — 1 year ago(April 01, 2025 04:15 AM)
Different Animal Species may be able to Communicate With Each Other
Research shows that different species of animals might understand
and employ each other’s ways of communication,
Is it possible for an animal to learn the 'language' of another species?
Instead of focusing on human ideas of language, some scientists are emphasizing the physical and vocal behaviours animals use to communicate, such as elephants flapping their ears to greet each other.
"Language is kind of a species-specific communication system to humans,"
stated Simon W. Townsend,
a professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of Zürich.
A new study on inter-species social interactions found that migrating songbirds
might recognize calls from different bird species when migrating at night.
Another example is the fork-tailed drongo, a bird from Africa who tricks meerkats into leaving their food by mimicking calls that suggest a predator is nearby. When meerkats caught on to this trick and started ignoring the drongos, the drongos imitated other birds’ alarm calls or even mimicked meerkats’ alarm call to keep tricking them. The scientist who conducted this study is still trying to determine whether drongos are intentionally being deceptive or have simply learned that certain sounds lead to them getting food.
This type of research has the potential to enhance human understanding of animals as sentient beings.
We hope to see more studies that expand our knowledge of their communication methods,
which will hopefully allow us to understand them better.
https://ladyfreethinker.org/study-shows-different-animal-species-may-be-able-to-communicate-with-each-other/
March 01, 2025
Drongo Bird
tricks Meerkats
Edit to add one of the best YT comments:
Avidcomp
"Narrated by a Drongo doing a very good impersonation of David Attenborough."
️ -
Wu Ming — 12 months ago(April 06, 2025 08:13 PM)
Latest NEWS from the BONOBOS!
Bonobos can tell when a Human doesn’t know something
An experiment shows that Bonobos can understand when Humans lack knowledge.
And point them in the right direction.
Female Bonobo
A few captive Bonobos recently faced a seemingly simple task: locate a tasty snack hidden under one of three cups. Because Bonobos are brainiacs, pinpointing the cup with the treat should have been no sweat.
But there was a wrinkle: the apes were relying on a human, not another member of their own species, to flip over the correct cup. What’s worse, this person sometimes did not see where the food was placed.
So the Bonobos took it upon themselves to point out the correct cup to their human partner.
"The Bonobos knew when their partner was ignorant, and they communicated proactively to make sure that their ignorant partner still made the correct choice,"
says Christopher Krupenye, an evolutionary cognitive scientist at
Johns Hopkins University
, who helped run the experiment.
….
….
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobos-can-tell-when-a-human-doesnt-know-something/
February 25, 2025
Bonobos’ Complex Calls share an extraordinary Trait with Human Language
In a new study published on Thursday in Science, researchers report that Bonobo communication is rich in a feature that linguists call
compositionality
. This refers to the way we string words together to compose larger structures with more complicated meanings. Linguists divide
compositionality
into two categories,
a simple version and a more sophisticated one.
And researchers have long thought human language stands alone in the higher tier.
Bonobo Toby (c. 1980 - 2022), Columbus Zoo in Ohio.
….
….
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-calls-are-more-like-human-language-than-we-thought/
April 03, 2025
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv1170
April 03, 2025
Daisy the Bonobo
Cincinnati Zoo’s cutest Baby stealing the Internet!
March 26, 2025
BABY-Bonobo im KÖLNER ZOO
April 04, 2025 -
Wu Ming — 11 months ago(April 18, 2025 06:32 PM)
Congeneric Consciousness
In the animal kingdom, researchers discover behaviours that were once considered uniquely human.
What does this say about the interiority of our evolutionary relatives?
What's going on in this head?
🪰
Rats giggle, elephants mourn, octopuses feel pain, overstimulated insects fall into depression.
Modern behavioural science increasingly describes animal behaviour with human comparisons.
That's not a sentimental projection of our inner lives onto our near and distant relatives —
as if researchers recently succumbed to a Disney-style humanization of nature.
There are good reasons for drawing parallels between humans and animals.
Mechanisms that also shape human behaviour can be detected in animal brains. For example, if lab flies are subjected to excessive vibrations for too long, the stress makes them completely inactive. Only small doses of the antidepressant
lithium chloride
restore normality.
Experiments with Fun
Experiments don't have to involve animal cruelty. What if you encourage the test subjects to play and have fun? Playfulness is all-present among our animal relatives. Puppies do somersaults, wrestle extensively and romp back and forth across the meadow. Muscles are trained, movements are coordinated.
Play behaviour was now even demonstrated in insects. For this purpose, behavioural researchers from the University of Leipzig, together with neuroscientists from Northumbria University in Newcastle, constructed a small fair for fruit flies. The enclosed area contained a feeding station and two carousels in the form of counter-rotating turntables.
Some fruit flies prefer spinning for fun over food. (colleagues at the Uni Konstanz made this fly music box.)
While the majority of the flies avoided the fairground attractions, a remarkable minority couldn't get enough of riding the carousel. The playful ones boldly jumped onto the turntables, returned almost compulsively, and forgot to fill their bellies at the feeding station more often than the others.
If the flies even forgo food in favour of carousel time, they must have a strong motive for whirling around or they just enjoy it immensely. What could that motive be? The team suspects that the playful flies are simply bored to death in the monotonous lab world and seek adventure. Intensive interaction with a diverse environment promotes individual development — and in the process, self-awareness.
Animal Consciousness?
That's a general question posed by philosopher Kristin Andrews of York University in Toronto, as well as philosophers Jonathan Birch of the London School of Economics and Jeff Sebo of New York University.
A precise definition of
"consciousness"
is still pending. We can only conclude from the behaviour of fellow humans that they experience more or less the same
"inside"
as we do. That's similar regarding animal consciousness: We rely on analogical reasoning, supported by brain physiological similarities.
That animals lack an elaborate language is certainly no argument against consciousness.
Conversely, language ability alone is no guarantee, as shown by large language models such as
ChatGPT
, equipped with artificial intelligence. At least that's what we can assume so far.
https://www.spektrum.de/kolumne/was-karussell-fahrende-taufliegen-ueber-das-bewusstsein-verraten/2252104
April 14, 2025
Well, these playful insects aren't entirely new.
There used to be flea circuses
and Henri Charrière
"Papillon"
played with a fly 🪰 in prison.
Alas, neither the flea circuses nor the prison fly were scientifically studied in such detail.
Fruit Fly Carousels
🪰
🪰 -
TaraDeS — 10 months ago(May 19, 2025 11:24 AM)
Female Bonobos
keep Males in check with Solidarity
Researchers have long puzzled over, why female bonobos are superior to their male counterparts.
Now the mystery was solved.
Two female Bonobos clasp hands during mutual grooming.
To the point….
Strategy driving female Dominance:
Female bonobos team up to suppress male aggression against them.
The first evidence of animals deploying this strategy.
Female Coalitions uphold female Power:
In 85% of observed coalitions, females collectively targeted males.
And forcing them into submission and shaping the group’s dominance hierarchy.
Implications for Evolution and Human Society:
The study suggests that power isn’t solely determined by physical strength.
It can be driven by social intelligence and coalition-building by females. [
not just females
]
Biologically speaking, female and male bonobos have a weird relationship. First, there’s the sex.
Females decide when and with whom they mate. They easily parry unwanted sexual advances — and the males know better than to force the issue. Second, there’s the food. It’s the females who usually control high-value, sharable resources — e.g. a fresh kill.
Females feed while sitting on the ground, while males hover in tree branches waiting for their turn.
This freedom enjoyed by females might sound normal by our standards, but according to Martin Surbeck from Harvard University, it’s
"totally bizarre for an animal like a bonobo"
. Bonobo males are larger and stronger than females, which gives them the physical upper hand to attack, force matings, and monopolize food. Like almost all other social mammals with larger males, bonobo societies should be dominated by males. And yet, bonobo females famously maintain a high social status compared to their larger males.
Until now, nobody knew how this paradoxical dynamic was possible at all.
"There were competing ideas for how"
, says Barbara Fruth from the
Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour
who led the
LuiKotale Bonobo Research Station
for 30 years.
"None of which had ever been tested in wild bonobos living in the jungles in which they evolved."
Female Solidarity as a Tool for Power
Group of female bonobos from a wild population at LuiKotale, Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Now, a study by Surbeck and Fruth delivered the first empirical evidence from wild bonobos explaining the rare phenomenon: Females maintain power by forming alliances with other females.
The study found that females outranked males when they formed gangs, which the authors named
“coalitions”
. In the vast majority of coalitions — 85% of those observed — females collectively targeted males, forcing them into submission and shaping the group’s dominance hierarchy.
"To our knowledge, this is the first evidence that female solidarity can invert the male-biased power structure that is typical of many mammal societies,"
says Surbeck, the study’s first author.
"It’s exciting to find that females can actively elevate their social status by supporting each other."
Window to wild Bonobos
An international team of researchers compiled 30 years of data from six wild bonobo communities across three field sites in the DR Congo, which is the only country where bonobos live in the wild. The dataset included observations of 1,786 conflicts between males and females. The researchers analyzed the outcome of these conflicts of which 1,099 were won by females — together with a range of social and demographic data. By doing so, they unearthed clues as to what influenced
"female power"
which they defined as all the factors that tip the outcome of a conflict.
"You can win a conflict by being stronger, by having friends to back you up, or by having something that someone wants and cannot take by force,"
says Surbeck.
The team had some early hunches as to where the results would point. Surbeck was sure that female domination was driven by reproductive strategies, such as hidden ovulation, which prevent males from monopolizing mating opportunities. The result of coalition formation came as a surprise. Adult females are unrelated immigrants from different communities who did not grow up together, which makes their deep bonds and cooperation unexpected. Also, adds Surbeck who runs the Kokolopori bonobo research station:
"You just don’t see coalitions forming that much in the wild."
When coalitions form, they make an impression. The first sign is screaming so unbearably loud
"you have to block your ears,"
says Fruth. It’s hard for scientists to know what triggers a coalition as they form within seconds of an event, such as if a male attempts to hurt a young. The target male is followed through trees by screaming females who can sometimes cause fatal injuries.
"It’s a ferocious way to assert power. You know why these males don’t try to overstep boundaries."
Not always Dominance
Two female bonobos are engaged in grooming.
The wide-ranging study, which compared six bonobo communities, laid bare previously unknown nuance in the fam -
TaraDeS — 9 months ago(June 13, 2025 07:17 PM)
Actually I wanted to post this in the orca thread.
https://www.filmboards.com/t/Pets-and-Animals/Orcas-attack-Boats-more-Severe-
---3459917/
It fits better here.
When Orcas attack Ships and wear Hats
Whales and dolphins have their own culture that they pass on.
There are even dialects and trends.
Some orcas wear salmon on their heads like a hat.
Whales and dolphins possess impressive communicative abilities. Many are familiar with their
"songs"
.
Depending on the species, their repertoire ranges from clicks and whistles to complex 'ballads'. These sounds serve as a means of orientation through echolocation. They are also used by many whales and dolphins for social interaction - to find a mate, coordinate within a group or warn of danger. Dolphins can even call each other with individual whistles, similar to the way humans call names. Scientists therefore
try to get to the bottom of the systematics of these sounds. One crucial question is whether these sounds are based on something like grammar, a real language.
Whales and Dolphins have their own Culture
Many marine mammals exhibit complex behaviours beyond their communication. Orcas are among the most fascinating and culturally diverse. Within their species, different populations exist with their own
"traditions"- such as hunting techniques, dialects or social norms.
Since 2020, orcas repeatedly attacked sailboats in the Strait of Gibraltar and off the coast of Spain. Other populations appear to follow
fashion trends
. There are repeated reports of Orcas wearing dead salmon on their heads like a hat. This behaviour appears to be purely for entertainment. Based on their social skills, researchers assume that whales and dolphins have their own culture – characteristics and behaviours that are passed on within the group.
https://detektor.fm/wissen/spektrum-podcast-wale-delfine-orca
June 13, 2025
https://www.spektrum.de/news/verhaltensweisen-von-orcas-schwertwale-mit-marotten/2231468
June 04, 2025
As already said somewhere, sometimes…I don't think that orcas wear salmon hats
"purely for entertainment"
.
So far, only younger male orcas were observed doing this. They want to impress the girlies!
Orcas singing and dancing
I enjoyed this
video very much, despite the occasional micro-rustling.
And please, don't disturb and harass the orcas anymore!
So they continue
"singing and dancing"
.
- such as hunting techniques, dialects or social norms.
-
TaraDeS — 7 months ago(August 25, 2025 10:56 PM)
CETI
Ce
tacean
T
ranslation
I
nitiative
https://www.projectceti.org/
DECODING WHALE LANGUAGE - PROJECT CETI
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/society/our-programs/ceti/
Harvard Researchers study how to communicate with Whales -
TaraDeS — 7 months ago(September 03, 2025 11:29 AM)
Animal language? New Findings reveal a Communication more complex than we imagined
For decades, science avoided attributing structured language to animal species.
A new generation of research is demonstrating that animal communication could be much more sophisticated than previously believed.
Within the framework of the
Coller Dolittle Challenge
, promoted by the University of Tel Aviv and entrepreneur Jeremy Coller’s foundation, the most significant advances in this field are awarded with USD 100,000 annually to the best project and USD 10 million to the first team that successfully deciphers interspecies communication.
Sepias, Titis and Nightingales: Gestures, Names and Vocal Flexibility
Researcher Sophie Cohen-Bodénès, from the University of Washington in St. Louis, discovered that common cuttlefish use at least four tentacular gestures — "up", "lateral", "roll", and "crown" — that function as a gestural signaling system. The "crown" gesture, accompanied by intense colours and backward movements, seems to express unease in the face of environmental changes. David Omer’s team, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, documented that titis emit unique calls for each group member, suggesting the use of proper names. This phenomenon was also observed in African elephants and dolphins, which use distinctive whistles as acoustic signatures.
Artificial Intelligence and Dolphins: the Winning Project of the Year
The team led by Laela Sayigh, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, studies a community of 170 bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay, Florida, spanning six generations. Using artificial intelligence. They identified 22 shared whistles, including one that seems to express surprise at the unexpected and another, more abrasive one that serves as a warning.
Unpublished research suggests that dolphins could refer to absent individuals using their characteristic whistles, implying a form of referential communication.
Whales and Sperm Whales: Acoustic Patterns with linguistic Structure
Humpback whales exhibit statistical patterns in their songs similar to human language. Sperm whales adjust the tempo of their clicks during social interactions. The CETI Project identified 156 phonetic patterns that make up a
"click alphabet"
with acoustic similarities to human vowels.
Social Birds: The most accessible Candidates for complete Deciphering
According to Yossi Yovel, president of the
Coller Dolittle Challenge
, social birds could be the first to have their communication fully deciphered.
"Working with dolphins is very difficult. The first animal will be easier to study, probably a species of bird that lives in groups and vocalizes to coordinate."
Budgerigars show brain maps of vocal sounds similar to humans, while Japanese great tits modify the order of notes to alter the complete meaning of their messages.
A technological and ethical Revolution underway
Deciphering animal language could transform our perception of the natural world. The ability to massively process acoustic, gestural, and contextual data is opening a new era in the understanding of non-human intelligence.
"Anything we learn about animals makes us appreciate them more,"
says Yovel.
"Studies on communication probably lead many people to think, ‘Wow, they are like us!'"
If scientists manage to decipher the first animal language, we could access new ways of perceiving reality, redefining the boundaries between species and expanding our understanding of shared cognition.
https://noticiasambientales.com/science/animal-language-new-findings-reveal-a-communication-more-complex-than-we-imagined/
September 01, 2025
It's highly doubtful that this will lead to a deep understanding of one another.
But the research is certainly interesting. -
TaraDeS — 5 months ago(October 07, 2025 01:12 AM)
Orca says "Hello" and "Bye Bye" – and amazes Researchers
https://www.bluewin.ch/de/news/wissen-technik/der-orca-der-wie-ein-mensch-spricht-das-erstaunliche-experiment-mit-wikie-2903591.html
October 06, 2025
Listen to these Orcas imitate Human Speech
Hmmm, yah…with a bit of phantasy. -
TaraDeS — 6 months ago(September 20, 2025 10:36 AM)
Can dogs actually smell Fear in Humans?
A recent study at the Domestication Lab at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna
examined the astonishingly complex reactions of dogs to human fear sweat.
In fact, dogs can sniff out stress in human sweat.
It's common knowledge in dog households that our 4-legged friends have an excellent sense of their owners' emotional state. It's especially common to hear that dogs can smell fear in people. A new study from the University of Veterinary Medicine shows that dogs do indeed perceive human fear chemical signals, but their reactions to them vary greatly. This challenges the previous assumption that dogs generally avoid fear-inducing odors.
The study was conducted in the Domestication Lab of the
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Comparative Ethology
(KLIVV) at the University of Veterinary Medicine. A total of 61 dogs participated, divided into two groups. The experimental group was presented with two target objects: one smeared with fear sweat, the other with a neutral human odor. The control group received only neutral odor samples.
Fear Odor not inherently repulsive
The results, published in the journal
Frontiers in Veterinary Science
, showed that fear odors do influence dog behaviour. Many dogs appeared insecure. They stayed near the experimenters longer, lowered their tails or hesitated before approaching the target objects. Others, were not so reserved — they approached the fear probe more quickly than the neutral odor. This range of different reactions was the most striking observation of the study.
"Our results suggest that dogs are influenced by human fear odors, but their reactions are far from uniform,"
explains study lead author Svenja Capitain from the KLIVV.
"This variability could be influenced by factors such as life experience, training or even breed, but further research is needed to confirm these influences."
Practical Applications
It's noteworthy that age and gender had no significant influence – that is consistent with previous studies. The findings could have far-reaching practical implications for dog training, the selection of therapy dogs or the handling of our 4-legged friends in stressful situations.
A better understanding of why some dogs approach fear while others avoid it could help reduce stress, improve animal well-being and prevent safety risks, such as aggressive reactions to fearful individuals.
Recognizing Individuality
"Our research underscores the importance of considering individual differences in dog behaviour,"
emphasizes Capitain.
"By moving away from the assumption of uniformity, we can better understand
our 4-legged companions and help them navigate the human world."
In the future, the researchers plan to further investigate the role life experiences, training or breed
play in their reactions, and how environmental conditions — such as familiar versus unfamiliar places — influence behaviour.
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000288406/koennen-hunde-tatsaechlich-angst-beim-menschen-riechen
September 19, 2025
"dogs generally avoid fear-inducing odors."
I only know dogs that enthusiastically pounce on people (not necessarily attack them) when they sense their fear.
And you'd better not go near a dog if you've taken LSD.
I know of several cases where even generally peaceful dogs suddenly attacked the LSD users.
But I'm not a scientist.
Dogs detect Fear in 0.1 Seconds! -
TaraDeS — 6 months ago(October 04, 2025 10:41 AM)
Honeybee Dances
New Level of Animal Communication
Inside a hive, communication happens without sound or light.
Honeybees perform dances that share vital information.
Among these, the waggle dance is a striking example of symbolic communication.
Honeybee
Foragers returning with news of food trace specific patterns, encoding distance and direction as if they were coordinates on a living map. For decades, scientists thought this dance offered only vector information. The bees receiving it were believed to simply fly out in that direction. But recent work challenges this simplified view. The dance may be more than instructions – it could trigger memories and expectations about the environment outside.
Putting Honeybee Dances to the Test
Researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) and Freie Universität Berlin tested this idea. They trained a group of bees to a feeder positioned north of the hive, along a gravel road. Then they tracked dance-following recruits using harmonic radar. Some recruits were released at the hive, others at remote sites. One site resembled the hive environment with a similar road, while the other site was open grassland. This design helped reveal whether recruits simply followed the vector or relied instead on remembered features of the landscape.
Choices shaped by Memory
The results showed a clear pattern. Bees didn't blindly follow the vector. When released in a place resembling the hive environment, they flew with precision and efficiency. When released in grassland, their flights grew longer, less direct and more exploratory. The study also found that recruits recognized mismatches. They behaved differently when the starting point didn't align with what they expected. This suggests the bees weren’t just copying instructions but were comparing the dance with their own stored spatial memories.
Honeybees Dance beyond Instinct
The researchers tested whether bees might simply have an innate preference for following roads or long ground structures. Control experiments rejected this idea. Bees only followed such paths when those matched the routes dancers had actually flown. Foreign recruits, introduced into the test area without prior experience, showed no tendency to follow roads. This ruled out instinct as the explanation. Other experiments confirmed that elongated structures guided foragers only if the bees previously learned them.
Young bees performing orientation flights, for instance, displayed a tendency to follow patterns only after repeated exposure. This points to learning and memory as the driving force behind the observed behaviour.
Flights shaped by Memory
Honeybees divide their outbound flights into phases: the initial straight vector, the more flexible search and finally the homing flight back. The study found that the vector portion was strongly influenced by the dance, but recruits quickly adjusted if the environment looked unfamiliar. During search flights, bees drew heavily on their prior exploratory knowledge.
The findings reveal that recruits use a kind of cognitive map. They don't rely on raw instructions but instead combine social communication with personal experience. This allows them to anticipate features such as roads or open fields even before encountering them.
Complexity in Bee Dances
The work highlights the depth of honeybee intelligence. Their communication system is not rigid. Instead, it blends symbolic signals with memories of past exploration. The waggle dance primes recruits not only with directions but also with expectations of what lies ahead. "Our study reveals a higher level of cognitive complexity in honeybee communication," said Wang Zhengwei from XTBG.
"Waggle dance-following bees don't simply follow a blind vector instruction, they integrate it with a cognitive map of their surroundings built during earlier exploratory flights. This allows them to form expectations and navigate more efficiently."
Rethinking the Waggle Dance
The waggle dance, once thought of as a simple code, now appears more like a layered conversation. It merges instruction with memory, social learning with individual experience. This balance makes bees more adaptable, efficient, and surprisingly sophisticated navigators. By showing that bees expect specific landscape features and adjust their flights accordingly, the study reshapes how we understand their world. The hive isn't just a place of encoded dances – it's also a place where memory and communication meet.
Bees Dances an Inspiration for AI
These findings go beyond bees. They highlight how even small-brained creatures use flexible strategies when moving through the world. The waggle dance isn't just a code but also a way of linking shared knowledge with personal memory. Understanding this balance could inspire new ideas in robotics and AI, where machines may also benefit from combining external signals with stored experiences.
Honeybees remind us that efficient navigation is never just a -
TaraDeS — 5 months ago(October 15, 2025 04:59 PM)
Nothing new, but a passionate call for humility and acceptance of difference.
Dogs name Toys while Elephants name each other.
Animal language is more complex than we imagine.
If we really want to grasp what animals are
'saying'
,
we need to understand their communication on their terms, not ours.
Elephants drink from a pond at the Ngutuni wildlife conservancy (Kenya) October 29, 2024.
Another day, another cute story about how dogs can grasp elements of human language
and use them to communicate with us.
First, there was Mr. Waffles, the Yorkshire terrier that
"talks"
to his owners by pressing electronic buttons that were pre-programmed with words and phrases. In one of his videos, viewed more than half a million times, the pint-sized pooch stares defiantly at the camera and responds to an empty packet of treats by pressing the
"I don’t give a damn"
button. Followed by the
"bitch"
button. Bad dog, Mr. Waffles.
Waffles - The Yorkie.
Then, last month, researchers reported that some dogs can mentally categorise their toys depending on their use.
"Fetch toys"
can be distinguished from
"tug of war toys"
and retrieved appropriately.
I’m a dog owner. I fully admit to being one of the third of Britons who would rather talk to their pets than to people. At first glance, the study seems to confirm what I already knew – that my dog understands everything that I say. But while interactions like this tell us something about how smart dogs are, they barely scrape the surface of their communicative abilities.
In recent years, many parallels were drawn between animal communication and human language. We have learned, for example, that some animals have names that they use for each other. Elephants use particular vocalisations – harmonically rich, low-frequency sounds – to address key members of their group.
"Hey, Dave, over here!"
In their early months of life, bottlenose dolphins invent their own unique
"signature whistle"
, which goes on to become the name that others use to call them. During this same time period, mother dolphins communicate with their youngsters using “motherese”. Just like human mums, they adjust the frequency and pitch of the sounds to create a singsong tone thought to facilitate bonding.
Bottlenose Dolphins
Meanwhile, songbirds have different regional dialects, meaning the sparrows near me sing with the avian equivalent of a Birmingham accent –
"All right, bab!"
And sperm whales, which use
"names"
and accents, recently showed to have their own phonetic alphabet. The gentle giants communicate with patterns of clicks. By altering their rhythm, tempo, duration and number, simple units of sound can be combined to generate complexity. According to the scientists who discovered the phenomenon, this is similar to the way that humans combine sounds to form words.
Whenever these stories break, they are met with surprise.
"Aren’t animals clever?! Who’d have thought it?!"
But none of this should be surprising. All of these animals live deeply complex, rich and social lives. Sperm whales, for example, live in tight-knit female-led groups, which sometimes come together to form larger groups known as
"vocal clans"
. They hunt together, babysit for each other and work together to see off predatory orcas. Of course they have complex communication. They need it for survival.
Sperm Whales
The mistake, however, is to presume – a priori – that animal communication is anything like ours. All too often we try to crowbar animal communication into a human-centric framework, but it’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. We’ll never solve the puzzle, because there will always be a fundamental mismatch.
Just as a cuttlefish would miss the subtlety of human sarcasm, so too humans are unlikely ever to understand the full spectrum of cuttlefish communication. When they dynamically change the patterning and colour of their skin, it’s fascinating, but alien. Different animals communicate in different ways. Sure they use sound, but they also use colour, smell, electricity, vibrations and the medium of expressive dance. There is an abundance of animal communication that we miss because we don’t have the sensory organs or humility to detect it.
Cuttlefish
Human language – with names and words and syntax and grammar – is just one solution that one species has evolved to help it navigate the challenges that it faces. Non-human animals live different lives with different struggles. If we really want to grasp what animals are
'saying'
, we need to understand their communication on their terms, not ours.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/09/dogs-elephants-animal-language-complex
October 09, 2025
Well, humans also speak not only with words and grammar, but with body language and facial expressions.
This field of research fills many pages as well, getting to know ourselves better.
And then there's more…
️ Discover the Truth!
