Animal language (Animals)

by dhw, Sunday, January 11, 2015, 20:49 (3602 days ago)

A fascinating article in today's Sunday Times concerns research on gibbon language. Scientists believe that they and many other animals “use a system that is similar to early human language”. They also think they may be able to “construct a Rosetta Stone of animal communication because some animals not only have sounds for specific things, such as food, but also build these into sentences with rudimentary grammatical rules.”-By observing the behaviour of the animals after their conversations, the researchers are able to work out what must have been said. “They seem to comment on all sorts of events. It's not just warning calls.” The gibbons even sing songs.-The researchers are also working on the languages used by rats, whales, dolphins, bats and songbirds. For those of us who believe that we are descended from earlier organisms, this can hardly be surprising. Communication is essential to survival, but clearly it is also used for matters which humans in their arrogance assume are exclusive to themselves, including love, parental guidance, education, and in the case of the gibbons, even a fair division of the domestic chores! Our language and our range of thought have clearly evolved far beyond theirs, but they have enough for their needs. This is not anthropomorphizing animals. We ARE animals. They got there before us, and we have merely developed what they passed on to us.