A Summary Of Animal Communication

Animals, like humans, use gestures, smell, touch, sound and other methods to communicate with each other. The function of communication between animals varies from animal to animal. Some groups of animals use communication to signal ownership, whether to defend or claim food, territory or one of their mates, or to give signals about food, such as bees do to communicate a great pollen source by doing the waggle dance.

For many years researchers have been trying to find an answer to the question whether apes can talk (Hillix & Rumbaugh 2004, 10). Early experiments took place in the 1930s when researchers decided to raise a baby chimpanzee alongside a human baby to see whether the chimp can acquire language on its own. This project proved to

The Gardner’s did not speak English while teaching Washoe, to prevent her from understanding spoken language. Until the time of her death in 2007, Washoe had learned over 250 signs by deliberate training and was able to make combinations such as water bird upon seeing a swan on a lake, which showed productivity in her communication (Mihalicek & Wilson 2011, 579).

One problem concerning language experiments on animals, which resulted in many experiments with apes to fail, is that animals are not supposed to be talking human language since they already have their own language to communicate with each other.

Similar to human infants’, chimpanzees’ vocal cords are placed higher in the vocal tract, so that the entrance to the trachea can be closed off, which allows both to breathe and swallow at the same time without choking. While developing, the human larynx moves downwards, resulting in adult humans not being able to breathe and swallow at the same time. As seen in (1), the oral cavity of a human infant and one of a chimpanzee are very similar in contrast to the one of a human adult

Most animals also lack discreteness in their language, which refers to the ability to use different sounds for example and combine those to form new meaning. In human language, there is an infinite amount of sentences that can be created, as shown in (2):

(2) “Matt says, that …” “Adam says, that Matt says, that …” “Pete says, that Adam says, that Matts says, that …”

In contrast, apes only have a limited set of calls and they cannot combine those to create more complicated sets of calls.

Moreover, one huge difference between natural animal communication and the communication in laboratory experiments is the way the animals produce sound. In their natural environment, animals use communication to signal danger, ownership, affection or aggression, which all bear a distinct function for the animal. On the other hand, when animals are communicating in laboratories they often times are forced to produce sounds or make certain connections between symbols. In conclusion, animal communication is very different to human communication and while experiments give great insight on how animals communicate and can acquire certain things, they do not seem to always give a successful