Animal communication

For anyone who owns a pet, animal communication is a certainty. However, this article will address the question of whether animals really do communicate - with each other and with humans - from a scientific viewpoint.

In scientific terms, communication has been historically defined as the transfer of information from the sender (or communicator) to the recipient (or receiver). There have been many different viewpoints regarding how and why this information transfer occurs, and four principal schools of thought will be briefly highlighted here:

a.)change the behavior of the receiver in some way.

b.)be adaptive (or useful) to one or both participants.

c.)must involve intent on the communicators part.

Thus, the only clue we have with regard to answering the question addressed in this article, 'Do animals communicate?' is by direct observation of the overt behavior exhibited by the animals concerned, and, according to Wilson, especially the behavior of the recipient.

2. W. H. Thorpe (1979) - argued that communication must either be deliberate (thus implying conscious intentions) or be adaptive to the sender (i.e. the communicators behavior must be goal-directed). His ideas therefore concurred with those of Wilson.

3. Daniel Otte (1974) - suggested that we should only apply the term 'communication' to systems that have been under pressure from natural selection to provide information. The key for Otte was evolution; where the animal scans its environment with its sensory preceptors and only a limited number of signals are available (those which have specifically evolved), which are capable of transmitting information. These signals can be behavioral, physiological or morphological characteristics which have specifically evolved or been maintained via natural selection due to their ability to convey information to other animals.

Otte suggested that researchers should focus on observing behaviors of the signal emitter (communicator) and not on those of the receiver, thus his viewpoint was the direct opposite of Wilson's.

Otte also introduced the concept of the 'legitimate receiver', i.e. the animal the communicator is attempting to signal to, it is to the signaler's advantage to communicate with the legitimate receiver, rather than spending energy signaling to bystanders. Finally, he stated that there were six types of signals - attention, identification, spatial, response level, and those carrying temporal and event information. Otte's viewpoint became the most widely accepted by animal researchers in the 1970s and 80s.

4. W. J. Smith (1977) - stated that animal communication researchers should focus on three levels:

a.) Syntactic (the formal characteristics of the signal - e.g. vision, hearing, scent markings etc). Animal signals can be split into two broad structural categories - discrete and graded; most are graded thus allowing for more information to be carried.

b.)Semantic (the meaning and informational content of the signals). There are two types of such information - behavioral and non-behavioral. Behavioral information include 'what' messages - those that have been evolutionarily selected e.g. attack, escape etc; and 'how' messages - which are supplemental messages including probability, intensity, direction etc. Non-behavioral signals include 'who' messages - which identify the communicator - species, sex etc; and 'where' messages - which carry information about the location of the sender).

c.) Pragmatic (the specific functions of the signal - to warn, to threat, to copulate etc).

To understand communication in animals, Smith stated that all three levels must be considered.

By the beginning of the 1980s researchers became interested in what benefit communication signals served to those animals that use them. Krebs and Dawkins (1978) suggested that animals tend to manipulate events in their environment for their own benefit and that communication is basically the interplay between two roles - the sender is the 'manipulator', while the receiver is the 'mind reader', the latter constantly trying to figure out what the communicator is going to do.

Getting back to the question asked at the outset of this article: Do animals communicate? - the resounding answer has to be yes, and that there is evidence for many different kinds of communication in the animal kingdom. Some examples will now be given:

1.) Black-backed gulls - these birds are extremely territorial and communicate 'threat' to intruders via extending the neck, pointing the beak downward and pushing the forewings forward. They also use communication signals in mating, where the birds pair for life. It is the female who circles in the air looking for a mate, while the earth-bound males 'call' to them. The female then uses a courtship routine whereby she attempts to pacify the male (she is encroaching on his territory) - where she bows her head and faces away from the male. If the male bird does not attack, she will peck at the bottom of his beak and receive a free meal for her trouble! Copulation now begins with the female singing throughout!

Afterwards the birds will go in search of a nesting site together, assist each other in constructing the 'home' and when the eggs are laid they will take it in turn to incubate them. The newly hatched young are born with an innate communication system that they use to indicate to their parents that they are hungry (they peck on the red spot on either parents beak). Chicks recognize the 'voice' of their parents from a very young age.

2.) Honeybees - Von Frisch was the first researcher to unravel the behavior of these insects. He discovered (1919) that bees had a 'language', whereby they informed each other where food was located by performing elaborate dance routines.

3.) Humpback whales - use complex songs to communicate their location and other information to the rest of the school.

4.) Dolphins - can combine symbols in many different ways; the research here suggesting that they can be trained to understand word meanings. Kenneth Noris said that the social life of dolphins depends on sound.

5.) Parrots - have complex linguistic abilities.

The difference between animal and human communication is obvious - we use a complex language (including syntax, semantics and pragmatics - as animals also use but in a different fashion), involving our highly developed cerebral cortices and sophisticated voice boxes. The inevitable question was eventually asked by animal researchers - could animals talk? Some researchers believed that language was species-specific, implying that only humans have 'proper' language (e.g. E.H. Lenneberg), while other scientists suggested that human language evolved from animal communication.

The greatest possibility for language training existed among the great apes, which also possess highly developed cerebral cortices. Research exploring whether apes could use language began in the 1930s when the Kellogs raised a 7-month-old chimp (whom they names Gua), alongside their own 9 month old son. They found that the chimp developed language comprehension and seemed to understand phonetic content but could not 'produce' language.

In 1947 Hayes trained a chimp called Viki and claimed that after three years she had learned to say three words. A breakthrough came in the 1960s when the Gardiners trained a chimp named Washoe to use American Sign Language, after they had observed that apes tend to communicate with each other using gestures. There was some measure of success. Since then, apes have been taught to communicate using plastic symbols (e.g. Premack and Premack in 1963 teaching the chimp Sarah), or computer keypads specially developed for the animals use (e.g. Rumbaugh, 1977).

The over-riding findings however were that although apes could be trained to comprehend language (and use it to some degree) they could not achieve the sophistication of the language observed in human children. It was concluded that apes may learn language via imitation, reduction, expansion or using novel or new symbols; and that the majority used imitation - it was possible that the human trainers were 'cueing' the animals. Research in this area continues.

In conclusion, animals do communicate when one considers that the definition of communication involves information transfer from the sender to a receiver. No animals have however evolved the sophistication of the human language - communication system, though they can convey their needs, desires and reactions to the environment via some sophisticated signaling of their own.