Talk to the Animals?

My dog is looking at me now it’s barking at me. It always seems to be saying something. But how would I know if it was or not?. I’m not sure if I really want to know what is being said,but perhaps it could be quite useful if I could understand the barks. Perhaps that secret to life the universe and everything is being missed, because we can’t talk to dogs. Perhaps fish are the ultimate mathematicians because they don’t have fingers to count by. The trouble is once again we don’t understand their blips and blocks.

Dolphins have long been studied as they’ve been the closest candidate to human beings to be able to talk. Dolphins are capable of making a broad range of sounds using nasal airsacs located just below the blowhole. Roughly three categories of sounds can be identified however, frequency modulated sounds which are usually just called whistles, burst-pulsed sounds and clicks. Whistles are used by dolphins to communicate, though the nature and extent of their ability to communicate in this way is not known. Research has shown however that at least some dolphin species are capable of sending identity information to each other using a signature whistle which is a whistle that refers specifically to the identity of certain dolphins. The burst-pulsed sounds are also used for communication, but again the nature and extent of communication possible this way is not known.The clicks are directional and used by dolphins for echolocation( a bit like Sonar) and are often in a short series called a click train, the rate increasing when approaching an object of interest. Dolphin echolocation clicks are amongst the loudest sounds made by animals in the sea.

People play around with dogs and get them to talk, or should I say make sounds such as in the video below. I wonder what the dogs are really thinking? I wouldn’t be very happy if somebody played around and got me to talk so I’d imagine they are throwing back as good as they get if not more.

If  some animal did learn to talk and we found out there is another intelligent species on earth then it could be quite a problem. I expect the household pets wouldn’t be too unhappy but cows, sheep and similar I think we would find wouldn’t be too happy and we would lose a food supply or two or even more. Thinking about it I’m not sure that I could eat something that I talked to everyday. I don’t think we would have anything to fear on the security side of things as cows would have a hard time holding an AK-47 but obviously could carry a lot of strapped on explosives (that is if it wanted to wear clothes) as a suicide bomber but this would be pretty obvious unless wearing clothes was a common occurrence.

Crows have been used to test intelligence and after years of observing them in the wild, researchers couldn’t determine if the birds’ ability was innate, or if they learned to make and use their tools by watching one another. If it was a genetically inherited skill, could they, like the chimps, use their talent in different, creative ways?

To find out, 23 crows of varying ages were allowed to mate. Four hatchlings were raised in captivity, and all were carefully kept away from the adults, so they had no opportunity to be taught about tools. Yet soon after they fledged, all picked up sticks to probe busily into cracks and shaped different materials into tools. This means the basis of tools has been inherited. This may show intelligence.

But since animals lack language, they probably also lack “the extra layer of imagination and explanation” that provides the running mental narrative accompanying our actions. The crows lack of language could show that they are not intelligent but just carry out genetically preprogrammed actions. Take your pick.

Intelligence and language seem to run hand in hand. Today no one knows whether any animal is intelligent and I would imagine that it would take another couple of million years to get anywhere near the evolution required to allow any animal to speak. It’s a pity really as we could be doing quite a bit of injustice.

Pigs and intelligence

Animal Farm. An old film, a real classic.