VIEWING ANIMAL LANGUAGE AS A RICH COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

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Animal language is studied as a comparison to human language. While this holds an importance in being able to recognize visual cues in their language and analyze and decode their meanings, it is also important to differentiate animal language as it compares to human language to discover its uniqueness. Animals have various recognition processes and behavioral responses in their communication system. Various animals have different ways of characterizing signals and some species utilize signals differently that proves that their language is unique. Due to animals’ inability to communicate their thoughts and ideas, humans were believed to be the only living creatures who could convey feelings- this is not the case. Since animal communication analysis contains a great deal of human language analogy, we are forced to view their communication as it compares to our own. Animal language should not be seen as a mere imitation of human language, but rather as a rich and fascinating communication system.

Some researchers feel that animal language should not be compared to human language. A major reason why Anderson (2005) shares this belief is because the constructs resulting from this research is not always as straight forward as they appear because they are heavily influenced by human language analogy (p. 44). Thinking in terms of conception of situations, we cannot be sure that they view situations the same as humans do. If it can be argued that different human languages can shape thought, there are translations of this idea apparent in languages of differing species, such as signaling and bioluminescence. While animals can be taught to perform certain abilities that may seem to display an understanding through their ability to replicate this understanding through a type of utterance, this does not equate to the animal having the same interpretation as we do. If a parrot is taught to say, “Hello,” we cannot be sure that what we conceive the word to mean is the same as the parrot’s understanding. Anderson points out that the animal is usually performing an act for a reward during experiments, which can lead to a different understanding of what the word means to us as an English word (p. 44). This offers the idea that an animal’s conception of the world and experiences in different situations may not be exactly the same as a human’s conception of the same experience.

While it is a common belief by dog owners that their beloved pet can understand commands and can sit, jump, lay, play dead, and beg to display this understanding, the pet is merely responding to signals and is not performed through a decoding process. It is easy to believe that the behavior is consistent with a preferred interpretation because we relate their responses to our own. Animals also display the capability of deceit. Anderson reveals that a mother bird will attract an intruder’s attention with a display of a “broken wing” to steer it away from the nest (p. 45). He continued to note that when the intruder is out of the way of the nest, the bird will then reveal her true state by flying off. This seems like an easy assumption, however this is only one interpretation of this type of action. Animals lack context in communication and their utterances are not sentences nor fit linguistic patterns. Bradbury and Vehrencamp state that while animal signals lack linguistic reference because these “inadequacies,” there are still patterns that can be analyzed as having properties of intentionality (p. 404). This proves that they are not in fact inadequacies, but rather unique communicative properties.

Signaling is an important communicative behavior that is a display of intentionality utilized by animals to transmit information. According to Bradbury and Vehrencamp, some species use very unique means of signaling such as honey bees and marine inhabitants. (p. 33). The honey bee was analyzed to perform dance language that was hypothesized by Karl von Frisch in the mid-1940s as a means of communicating direction and distance of a food source. Wenner and Wells stated that Von Frisch’s bee dance hypothesis was one of the few hypothesis of that century that gained the most attention (p. 8). They state that it was remarkable due to its simplicity and the experiments that supported the hypothesis were proven to be repeatable. The bee’s dance is performed on a horizontal surface. The distance to the spotted food location is displayed by the bee by the number of waggles per dance. They further detailed that the duration of each is a display of direction through the axis of the waggle relative to the location of the sun. Stegmann adds that further research also states that the nature of the target can be determined by the directions of the dances, which can be food or a nest site (p. 8). Bradbury and Vehrencamp add that the sun provides the bees with a reference for the horizontal plane that bees can determine no matter their location (p. 597). They also point out that since bees have internal clocks, both dancers and bees receiving the communicated information correct for shifts in the sun’s position. This observation displays evidence of intentionality because it is a behavior that the bees direct towards each other with a mutually understood objective.

Another unique example of signaling can be found in some marine and terrestrial inhabitants in which they use bioluminescence to produce their own light. This biochemical process can be used as a signal to both prey and predators. Anglerfish are known to use a bioluminescent lure that dangles in front of them as a means of attracting prey. Bradbury and Vehrencamp shared that dragonfish simply illuminate their surroundings in search of prey (p. 139). Some organisms utilize bioluminescence to startle and warn predators when they are disturbed. While animal communication systems lack the use of some important features of human languages such as symbols, lexical syntax, and recursion, there are many ways that animals communicate in which humans cannot.

Bats utilize a variety of forms of communication, some involving odorous chemicals and others require no additional receiver. According to Bradbury and Vehrencamp, foraging bats use sound waves to their advantage and fly from left to right to create a succession of waves in its call to its edible target (p. 29). They added that the bats emit calls and listen for returned sounds to allow them to obtain information on their speed as compared to a potential food target. Bats also communicate through the use of odorous chemicals that assists in informing potential intruders of their territory or dominance over a female or offspring. They also pointed out that this use of odorous chemicals is also used by female bats so that they can locate their own pups upon returning from foraging (p. 208- 213). In addition, they shared that male bats will transmit their chemical signals by opening a sac located on their inner wing while they hover around a female bat and wafting the scent. Bats are not the only animals who release chemicals as a means of communication. Peterson (2018) reiterates this point in the fact that lobsters will release a jet stream of liquid at each other that sprays from under their eyes and contains a special mix of chemicals (Section 3). He stated that this spray contains a special mix of chemicals that informs its opponent about its size, sex, health, and mood and is sprayed before two lobsters fight. He continued by stating that a lobster can sometimes tell by the size of its opponent’s claw if it is best to back down from the fight. The information delivered by the lobster’s chemical spray can also have the same affect. The use of chemicals is a very important aspect in animal communication for some particular species, which is another example that separates their communication from forms that are utilized by humans.

Bats also apply a type of self-communication that eliminates the need for cooperative contexts between a sender and receiver, which is through echolocation. According to Bradbury and Vehrencamp, bats, along with dolphins, emit sounds and listen for the echoes they generate to decipher the presences of nearby obstacles, predators, or prey (p. 8). The process of echolocation is a two-way conversation, but the sender is also the receiver of the high-frequency sound. They point out that communication in which the sender and the receiver are the same individual is known as autocommunication (p. 8). Bats also utilize this communication system to recognize familiar areas and because objects reflect different frequencies and amplitudes, this is an indicator of objects with different shapes and sizes. This allows bats to identify and categorize their targets.

Like communication, humans were once believed to be the only ones who can think and have feelings because of their ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas. This comparison is not entirely accurate because not all word-conveyed human emotions are reliable and just like their ability to communicate should be viewed as a more sophisticated language system, their emotions display nonverbal communication as well. Masson and McCarthy (1995) point out that the seventeenth-century French philosopher, Descartes, believed animals to be “thoughtless brutes,” machines, automata (p. 18). They quote Descartes as stating that the reason why animals do not speak the way we do is because they lack the organs required to speak, but rather they have no thoughts. This belief does not seem to hold water in some of the acts that are witnessed when animals appear to show emotion.

Elephants exhibit an act called “mating pandemonium” in which the female in estrus makes a loud call until she finds a male. According to Masson and McCarthy, the family of elephants gather around and display excitement as the two mate through loud trumpeting sounds and stomping of their feet (p. 219-220). If Descartes’s beliefs were inaccurate and did not account for these types of ceremonial acts of display, much less, smaller displays of emotion.

The extent of animal emotions remain to be discovered. They may have feelings that humans do not have and cannot be interpreted not because they lack thoughts or knowledge but because we lack the knowledge of this unfamiliar feeling. Masson and McCarthy discussed another observed instance in which can lend a hand to the possibility of animals evoking senses that have possibly not been discovered or even feelings that they have that we lack. They point to an observation by George Schaller in which a mother lion left her three small cubs under a fallen tree and were killed by two lions from another pride (p. 219). There are two instances in this story in which animals display emotions that could not be explained, in comparison to human behavior. They stated that one male ate part of one of the cubs and the second male carried away another cub. He carried it as he would a food item, but would stop to lick it and then nestled it between his paws. There were no observed analysis of why the animal would kill the young cub, carry it in the same manner it carried its food, and then nestle it in between his paws. They included another interesting act carried out by the mother lion in which she returned several hours later and found the aftermath of the attack. She sniffed her last dead cub, licked it, and it was reported that she sat down and ate it, leaving behind only the head and its front paws. Since the animal was acting like a lion and not a human, this reiterates the point that animals perform acts that communicate something that we cannot understand because we lack the complete knowledge of their thought process.

Just as humans have an affluence of languages between different cultures, this is also witnessed to be present in animal communication in regards to their various species. There is no doubt that it is important to analyze their communication abilities as it compares to humans to be able to understand what they are conveying. These are just a few examples that prove that it is equally important to analyze their styles of transmission to unearth the differences in order understand the uniqueness of their rich communication system, rather than an imitation our own.

References

Anderson, S. R. (2004). Doctor Dolittle’s Delusion. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Bradbury, J. W. & Vehrencamp, S. L. (2011). Principles of Animal Communication, Second Edition. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.

Masson, J. M. & McCarthy, S. (1995). When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals. New York, NY: Delacorte Press

Peterson, J. B. (2018). 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos [Audible version]. Retrieved from Audible.com

Stegmann, U. (2013). Animal Communication Theory: Information and Influence. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Wenner, A. M., & Wells, P. H. (1999). Anatomy of a Controversy: The Question of a "Language" Among Bees. Boulder, CO: NetLibrary.