Animal Language Much More Sophistocated Than Previously Thought

[Guest guest]

Here's an interesting email cross posted from CVA . Keep in mind that entire prairie dog colonies are routinely buried alive by human construction and development. When you learn of such an impending atrocity to these highly intelligent beings, please ardently and persistently speak out for them and encourage others to do the same. Margaret

 

 

Posted by: "vegndeb" on CVA, Sun Jun 1, 2008 11:38 am (PDT) Hi all, I wanted to share a passage from "Animals in Translation" by Temple Grandin. I have huge personal issues with how she uses her talents but I don't deny her ability to provide new insights into other animal minds. The following is from a section titled "Do animals talk to each other the way humans do?" This is kind of long but if you're interested read on .... "Those are fighting words in the fields of animal and linguistic research. A lot of people are invested in the idea that language is the one thing that makes human beings unique. Language is sacrosanct. It's the last boundary standing between man and beast." She spends a page or two describing some research done by a C. Slobodchikoff (C.S.) at Northern Arizona University in which sonograms are used to analyze the distress calls of a particular type of prairie dog. The results are described as such ... "... he found that prairie dog colonies have a communication system that includes nouns, verbs, and adjectives." That they can tell one another what kind of predator is coming (noun), how fast it's moving (verb) and they can communicated whether a human is carrying a gun or not. "They can also identify individual coyotes (their predators) and tell one another which one is coming". Further we're told that "Dr. Slobodchinkoff also found evidence that prairie dogs aren't born knowing the calls .... they have to learn

them." Anticipating the criticism that this still isn't "real language" she goes on to say that "the case against animal language is getting weaker. Different linguists have somewhat different definitions of language but everyone agrees language has to have Meaning, Productivity, ... and Displacement." She goes on to explain how the communication system of the prairie dogs in this study have met the first two criteria at least and that ... since other animals have used language to talk about things that aren't present, there's no reason to assume prairie dogs can't do it too." There's a paragraph about the prairie dog's apparent use of Transformational Rules in their communication. Finally, Dr. Grandin then goes on to relate the stories of apes who definitely have Displacement in their language. She ends with the thought that "it's unlikely that Dr. (C.S's) prairie dogs would have nouns, adjectives, verbs, semanticity, and

productivity without also being able to use their calls to communicate about something that isn't immediately present." Finally, in posing an answer to the question of "Why Prairie Dogs?" she tell us that "From what we know now, it seems prairie dogs' ability to communicate may be greater than that of animals with more complex brains, including the primates." Why .... "Dr. Slobodchinkoff speculates that instead of looking for animal language in our closest genetic relatives, the primates, we should look at animals with the greatest need for language in order to stay alive." That would be another blow to the idea that human language is unique. "If language naturally evolves to serve the needs of tiny rodents with tiny rodent brains, then what's unique about language isn't the brilliant humans who invented it to communicate high-level abstract thoughts. What's unique about language is that the creatures who develop it are highly

vulnerable to being eaten."