Eve is here. Given the right opportunity, it may be helpful to cover other useful topics beyond the news-related topics that have been particularly stressful these days. Animal communication is of interest not only to most pet owners, but also to animal lovers and animal experts (such as farmers and zoo personnel). However, this article is separately useful as an exercise in how to deal rigorously with an inherently difficult topic.
The authors of the books featured here argue that animal communication is limited and, in my inference, primarily limited to warnings about danger and identifying members of herds or tribes, so the implications are very I believe it is simple. I haven’t read it, but I would like to point out that the faces of people who consider crows to be a threat to other crows exceed a time frame and number of crows participating that seems impossible for all or even most crows. I’m wondering how he explains what can be described. Having seen the original “bad” person (the number of crows scolding, the temporal distance from the original human’s unpleasant behavior, etc.), it’s easy for the crows to just crow, “That person is mean!” cannot be explained). So, how do you tell the crows what the “bad guys” look like when they haven’t seen them?
You can find a detailed discussion Research on crows is the issue here.
That said, it’s useful to think about how to convey information outside of the structure of language.
Author Erica Good is a science journalist, former reporter and editor for the New York Times, and former editor-in-chief of Inside Climate News. It was first published in underdark
Over the past few decades, researchers have been conducting research on animal behavior We have succeeded in blurring the lines between homo sapiens And other animals. Researchers have discovered that animals, like humans, feel emotions, solve problems, communicate, and form complex relationships.
Any number of books — think Ed Yong “Vast world” Or Marc Bekoff’s “Emotional lives of animals” — has been dedicated to exploring these relatively recently recognized abilities.
But few books about how animals communicate have been written through the eyes of a scientist as careful and thoughtful as zoologist Arik Kirshenbaum. “Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication”
Kirshenbaum, a lecturer and researcher at the University of Cambridge, is distrustful of simplistic explanations, wary of assumptions, dedicated to sounding the alarm, and rarely makes unqualified statements. In Socratic style, he asks many questions, often with answers that neither he nor anyone else can yet provide.
It didn’t deter him from writing this book, and it shouldn’t deter others from reading it. But people who pick up Why Animals Speak may expect to find evidence of animal telepathy, or a dictionary of elephants speaking, or word-for-word translations of humpback whales. songyou will be disappointed. (On Amazon, one disgruntled reviewer summarized the book as “Animals Don’t Really Talk – The End.”)
If there’s a message Kirshenbaum wants to convey, it’s that we hope animals communicate at the zoo as much as we hope we can talk to our pets at the zoo or chat with our chimpanzees. It’s pointless to do so. Just like humans, “using the same equipment, the same ears, eyes, and brains as we do.”
The concept of words that we think of has no meaning in the animal world. Language is a human concept. Kirschenbaum writes that animal communication is closely tied to evolutionary strategies for survival. Species develop forms of communication that allow them the best chance of successfully negotiating the environments and social structures in which they live, whether in the underwater world of dolphins or in the highly social world. Wolf Forest Haven.
Kirschenbaum says scientists are learning a lot by analyzing animal sounds (such as wolves howling, dolphin whistles, and hyrax calls) and examining evidence. An explanation of the building blocks of a language: syntax and grammar. But the “why” in the book’s title is important, and knowing exactly what animals are “saying” is more important than trying to understand why animals communicate in the first place. He emphasizes his view that
“Even if you find out that you’ll never talk to animals the same way you talk to other humans, you’ll never have a real conversation with a dolphin, you can still explore those possibilities and find out why they “You’ll see if they live that way,” he writes, “and they do.”
Why Animals Speak is structured around discussions of six different animals (seven including humans) that have been extensively studied by researchers, each with its own chapter. Kirschenbaum himself has studied some of these animals, including wolves, dolphins, gibbons, and parrots, but he also incorporates work by other researchers. For example, the parrot chapter focuses primarily on the work of Eileen Pepperberg. famously taught A gray parrot named Alex speaks.
Kirschenbaum writes in his chapter on wolves that understanding animals means: “It’s about understanding the story of animals as individuals, observed in the wild but perceived as separate from their siblings and strangers of their own species. You may be perceived as your mortal enemy.”
Throughout his book, he repeatedly returns to the question of what language is. How different are we from other animals, really?
A wolf’s howl is intended for long-distance communication and is very different from a variety of short-range sounds, which are softer and contain more complex information, such as growls, whines, screams, and barks. Howls can be heard up to six miles (or more) away and are characterized by changes in pitch and tempo. Kirschenbaum said scientists generally agree on three distinct functions for howling. Howling is used to mark territory, communicate with other wolves in the pack, or just for fun.
But, he asks, “do these three roles of howling mean that a wolf howl has three different meanings?” Kirshenbaum doesn’t think so.
Some calls (such as fear shrieks and soothing cooing sounds) seem to convey emotions across species. However, he writes, “It is only because of language that we can understand “meaning” as having a clear definition.”
“If you don’t have a language, if you don’t even have a concept of what a language is, you probably don’t have a clear concept of its own meaning,” he added.
Instead, howls seem to convey ideas “without the need for clear, discrete meanings, as a language-indoctrinated brain might expect.”
Why Animals Talk is full of interesting facts about animal communication. Dolphins identify themselves by their characteristic whistle. The most dominant male hyrax is the one with the most complex song. The greater honeyguide, a small bird native to sub-Saharan Africa, cooperates with honey hunters, exchanging information and exchanging calls and whistles. The birds lead humans to the honey, and the humans pry open the nest so the birds can access the beeswax and larvae.
One of the most sophisticated communicators in the animal kingdom, gibbons’ calls can last 300 to 400 notes and can be combined into an astonishing number of songs.
As Kirshenbaum shows, methods of communicating information, from the basic “I am here” in songbirds to the more sophisticated speech of gibbons and chimpanzees, help animals survive in particular situations. It is a product of necessity. It will be developed for as long as it needs to be, no more, no less.
No book on animal communication is complete without writing about dogs, and this one is no exception. Kirshenbaum’s dog, Darwin, makes guest appearances throughout the book. (However, Darwin died at the age of 16 before completing it, and the book was dedicated to him.)
Dogs play an important role in every story of animal communication. That’s because, in a relationship built over tens of thousands of years, a tremendous amount of information is exchanged between dogs and owners for the benefit of both. However, readers will find support for the idea that their canine companions have telepathic abilities and other popular notions that many people have about their dogs, and animals more generally. You won’t be able to do that.
“Why Animals Talk” can be a frustrating book. Kirshenbaum often writes in a circular manner, repeating what he has written previously in slightly different words, often adding some element, but overreacting to asking questions to get his ideas across. depends on. It’s tempting to think that a better editor could have corrected these problems.
But Kirshenbaum’s book is also thought-provoking because it challenges readers to think hard about what we share with other animals on Earth and what separates us from them. There is no doubt about it.
Because, as Kirshenbaum ultimately concludes, there really is a line. “Yes, we have a lot in common,” he writes. “Animals have some syntax and some sounds that behave a bit like words, sometimes conveying complex ideas, but more often simple ones. As in, all these abilities don’t combine to create an explosive effect.”
Furthermore, “We have moved away so far and so quickly from animal behavior that direct comparisons between us and other species seem almost childish.” “Animals ‘Is there a language?’ should be obvious. It was never a good question. ”
