Science Question from a Toddler: Can animals talk to each other?

If we could talk to the animals, just imagine it—we could be butting in on other species' conversations.

Can animals talk to other animals? This question—from an Anon's 6-year-old cousin—is familiar to anyone who's ever been caught up in the poignant friendship of a cartoon fox and a cartoon hound. Obviously, their real-life equivalents aren't sitting down to chat, vocally, about Yeats over a nice cup of tea. But if you drop the human pretension, and start thinking of communication as a simple exchange of information, you'll see cross-species conversations happening, experts say.

"There's a really great photo set of a polar bear and a dog that were playing. What had happened was that this owner saw the polar bear come for his husky, and thought that was the end of the husky. Instead, they started playing for a half hour or so and then the bear walked off," said Doug Broadfield, Ph.D., a biological anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University.

Both animals were expressing an intent to play through the use of body language, Broadfield said. The human involved didn't get that at first, but the dog and the bear clearly knew what the other was "saying".

We humans tend to think of communication as solely about formal language—preferably spoken. Instead, animals use things like movement, posture and even pee—as well as sounds—to share concepts like, "I want to play," or messages like, "There's food over here." As long it makes sense, communication has happened.

In fact, some researchers think "communication" is a fancy way of talking about almost all animal behavior.

"Everything we do 'makes sense': to us, to somebody else, now or in the future. Perhaps I am a bit too radical in this, but it is honestly my position as scholar," said Dario Martinelli, Ph.D., who studies animal communication at the University of Helsinki in Finland.

Researchers like Martinelli see communication happening when a gazelle shows off for a predator—bouncing and running around in sight of a lion, looking conspicuously healthy and hard to catch. There's communication inherent, he says, in the symbiotic relationship between a hippo and the birds that eat bugs off its back.

Even with a more conservative definition, the question isn't really, "Does animal communication happen?" but, "Can humans understand it?" We don't always, and we're better at spotting communication in animals that think more like us, like apes, Broadfield said. Sometimes, even then, we see the communication and misinterpret the message.

"One of the very early mistakes was when we saw apes kind of smile. We thought everything was great," Broadfield said. "But then, in the wild, we found they don't really smile when they're happy. It means they're kind of anxious about something."

Observations like that make up the backbone of animal communication research. Like new parents trying to communicate with a baby human, researchers watch the behavior and try to make sense of it from situational context. It's easy for subjectivity to creep in, but it's the best system we've got. Getting more objective would require knowing what areas of animal's brain are associated with communication, and when they're in use.

And, unfortunately, that would take stuffing a conscious chimpanzee into an fMRI machine.

You can see the problem.

"It's been tried, but we're not any closer to understanding how the brain lights up for communication tasks in chimps," Broadfield said. "With humans, you can put them in an fMRI and give them a task to perform right there. With chimps, they perform the task, then you sedate the chimp and then put him in. It's stressful, and there's a delay time between doing the task and doing the scan."

"Ideally, you'd have to raise a chimp to be able to lay still in an fMRI and get results from there. But we're still a few years away from being able to do that."

To read more about animal communication, check out Dario Martinelli's sites on zoosemiotics and zoomusicology, or visit The Animal Communication Project.

Image courtesy Flickr user pmarkham, via CC

• [Anony Mouse]

  This is really interesting. The Polar Bear/Husky incident was covered in a National geographic (I think) years ago – a truly interesting example.

  I sometimes wonder whether this kind of thing happens much more often than we think – that the traditional nature documentary format of ‘killing, copulating and raising young’ has more to do with alligning closely with/not challenging the recieved truth of the ‘nature, red in tooth and claw’ ideology than it has to do with what actually goes on in the wild. that said, my ferrets’ interaction with other species tends to be fairly distinctly about one eating the other, or seeking to dominate the other (ferrets always win this, short of actually getting killed). So maybe not.

  • [The Lizardman]

    I’ve noticed this about ferrets as well (after keeping several of them for over a decade) they seem to effectively communicate to other animals that they are completely nuts and that the other will have to submit or kill them and they won’t make it easy either way. I’ve watched a female ferret under one pound completely dominate a 100+ lbs dog.

    Its one more reason to love them.

• [Silence in the Stacks]

  1. How is a six year old a toddler?
  2. I can’t help but picture the husky and bear scene with the following script:

  Bear: “Hey, can you play today”?
  Dog: “Ixnay on the laypay, my human is around. Give me a minute”.

  Yaps and runs around for a bit.

  Bear: “Graaarrrr”
  Dog: “Woof”

  They go off to play.

• [Mac]

  By any sensible definition animals do ‘talk’ with each other, but we still need a better definition of ‘talk’ than just ‘communicate information by actions’.

  Otherwise you could say that an inanimate object (such as a ball) talks. For example, if I put a ball on my desk and it rolls, it is communicating to me that the table isn’t level. Clearly I can extract information from the object’s actions … but I wouldn’t describe as the as object ‘talking’.

  It seems pointless to define “Object ‘X’ is talking” as “I can receive information from object ‘X’”.

  For example, using a definition like that means that I could never say that my girlfriend isn’t talking to me .. because just the fact that she is refusing to talk is communicating plenty of information – such as the fact I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight …

  Mac

• [Anonymous]

  The dogs choke collars had better be attached to leads attached to responsible humans. A dog left unattended while wearing a choke* collar can get into a world of hurt.

  *hint, hint.

  captcha: at appalled!

• [Counterglow]

  Lions and hyenas don’t get along. When things get nasty, the lions invariably go after the pack leader. In order to target her, they’d have to pick up from her body language that she was, in fact, the alpha. That might not actually be interspecies communication, but it’s clear evidence that the foundation for it exists.

• [treacle]

  I just watched the Jungle episode of Planet Earth last night: In it a rather large gang of chimpanzees went off on the warpath to go attack members of the next troupe over. One wonders at the mechanism by which 20+ chimps communicate: “Hey, let’s go kill The Others over there”, and then know to walk stealthily through the forest together into enemy territory, wait silently until the right moment, and then decide to attack. Fairly complex stuff. Is it all just body language?

• [Jonathan Badger]

  There is a difference between “communication” and talking. Obviously, animals communicate — they make noises to repel competitors or attract mates and so forth. What hasn’t been established is any example of *language* among non-human animals. While there have been several claims such as Koko the gorilla or Alex the parrot could use language in a meaningful way, few researchers other than the animals’ handlers have been convinced. Obviously the ability to use language evolved at some point, but it may have evolved in the hominid lineage, meaning that no living animals other than humans have this ability.

  • [Anonymous]

    If by “language”, you mean only spoken words (sounds which represent other persons, places, actions, etc.), yes, humans may well be the only species who has developed the technique. But the sounds and actions of an animal do represent intent and that can communicate volumes to a mating rival, a food competitor, a prey animal, etc. As someone who has worked with a wide variety of animals both domestic and wild, I can say with conviction that there is a subset of things that animals do that one can call simple behaviours, but there is another subset where those animals are trying to bridge the gap when they interact with a species not their own. At first, they try to talk to you in ways that they understand among those of their own kind. But then, they try things that they would never do with anyone else but you. Time after time, I’ve been surprised when an animal comes up with a new way to ask me for what they want. One thing that frustrates me about communicating with so-called scientists is that animals are as smart as their environment and their species needs for them to be. There is a vast spectrum of degrees of need to communicate within the animal kingdom, and their lives do not need for us to talk to them using our language. Thus they have no mechanism for “talking” to us since as a species, we have moved into a far less physical realm of communication. But within that spectrum, there are species who are accidentally close to each other in communication, and when that happens, a polar bear, an orangutan or an elephant can bond with a dog, and a deer can bond with a cat. Any animal handler knows that if you could remove the stresses of survival and the inner programming of instinctive survival behavior, strange and wonderful things could happen. But because it’s inherently hard to get past those things, those instances are rare. As a handler, I have come to the conclusion that even “objectivity” regarding animal intelligence is rife with subjectiveness and rarely does any “objective” researcher truly have a grasp on how an animal communicates and especially why they use that particular method to do so. IMHO, they do talk. To humans, as best as they can since they are not human, and to each other only as much as they need to which is dictated solely by the life they must lead within their species.

  • [Anonymous]

    I don’t see the distinction between communication and talking that you are trying to make. To me the word talking seems to descibe how humans perceive ourselves communicating. To say that other species don’t “talk” seems silly.

• [Connie H.]

  Both baby whales and baby elephants have to be taught the repective vocal communications of their species, so yes.

  I suppose most toddlers aren’t going to run across either animal in the course of daily life, most likely.

  • [Anony Mouse]

    birds too. If a baby bird doesn’t hear its parents sing, it just makes stupid noises and the other brds don’t like it. If by some freak of biologists’ interference, it breeds, then its progeny have to re-learn singing through trial-and-error, over several generations.

    Hmm. Maybe I read that here.

• [querent]

  The birds do it, the bees do it…

  the prairie dogs do it.

  http://www.cefns.nau.edu/Academic/Biology/Faculty/ConstantineSlobodchikoff.shtml

  really incredible stuff. some of the most mind-blowing, paradigm shifting science, that’s accessible, that i’ve seen in a while.

• [2hirondelles]

  First, I don’t think the original 6-yr-old poser of the question cared about the distinction between talk and communicate. Do I believe that other neighbourhood dogs understand what my dogs are saying when they bark? Yes.

  Do I believe dogs communicate with each other without sound or body language? Yes, and here’s why: We have two dogs, a 3-yr old Lab/Bernese cross (very bright and extroverted) and an 11-month-old Bernese (bright enough, very reserved), both male.

  House training the mixed breed was a breeze. The Berner was very slow. Accidents have only disappeared in the last month. The mixed breed is very vocal and can emit a wide variety of tones. When he wants to go out, he will sit in the hall, look at us, and ‘talk’. We will ask ‘do you want to go outside’, to which he will respond with a low-volume bark. If it’s the wrong question, he will not answer.

  About three months ago (when the Berner was 8 mos old) we realized that the mixed-breed would ask to go out for the Berner. We’d let them both out, and once the mixed-breed saw the Berner begin to pee, he’d turn back for the door, without peeing himself (he has a bladder the size of the Atlantic, it seems). At first we didn’t quite believe it, but after several repetitions, some in the dead of night while we were asleep, we accepted it and began paying close attention.

  There would be no vocalizations between the two dogs preceding the mixed-breed asking for the door, nor would there be any movement on the part of the Berner. In fact, he was often sound asleep. We could find no evidence of ‘leaking’ and have no idea how the mixed-breed knew to ask, but he did.

  The Berner has since learned to ask for the door, and the mixed-breed has stopped asking on his behalf.

  It is my opinion that our species is quite arrogant in our belief that we are the know-all be-all species of the planet. After all, we have made quite a mess of things, haven’t we?

  And it seems not a month goes by without some researcher discovering some aspect of animal intelligence or behaviour far surpassing anything we previously expected. (ie, ‘emotional life of cows’) I think it’s just a question of us not knowing what to look for/listen for, and maybe we’re not as bright as we think we are.

• [jrishel]

  my dog and cats certainly have had some heavily negotiated treaties over the years.

• [Anonymous]

  Anyone who has seen a magpie trap (bird in one half of a cage, carrion in the other with a one-way hatch) will know that intra-magpie talk doesn’t happen: the caged bird would warn the others.

  • [Anonymous]

    > the caged bird would warn the others.

    Only if it a) was capable of communication and b) was capable of understanding the nature of the one-way hatch.

    b) seems much more of a stretch than a).

  • [chenille]

    On the other hand, I’ve seen magpies do things that are hard to explain without some kind of coordination between them. For instance, one distracts a dog while the other takes its food, which they share at a safe distance.

    • [Boondocker]

      One explanation of that could be that they’re communicating, or that they’ve evolved an interesting behaviour that takes two magpies to pull off.

      Another could be that both independently tried to get the food, the dog was only able to prevent one, and the other magpie took advantage of the dog’s absence. Why did they share, you ask? Maybe because magpies can’t take food from a dog, but they can take it from other magpies.

      I’m not saying the magpies aren’t communicating, but I don’t see that the situation required communication to have occurred.

      • [chenille]

        If the first magpie was after the food by itself, it had a terrible plan, hanging around the dog and not going after it. I guess you’re right that communication isn’t required, though.

        Still, we know a lot of corvids are smart enough to even learn new tools. We know a lot of animals that aren’t as smart can coordinate tasks, and if you ask around, you’ll find a lot of magpie behavior that’s at least harder to explain if they can’t do so.

        Given that, I think it’s reasonable to conclude they can probably coomunicate, and I would want better evidence otherwise than them getting confused by a trap.

• [dole]

  I watch my dogs clean each others’ ears every single day and now I gotta see it on HERE?!

  Just kidding. Cool article and series, keep ‘em coming, Maggie.

• [Anonymous]

  “But then, in the wild, we found they don’t really smile when they’re happy. It means they’re kind of anxious about something.”

  I remember reading in “The Naked Ape” (by Desmond Morris) that smiling isn’t exactly a clear-cut sign of glee in humans either, but rather a social signal that often holds a strong relation to its purpose in our primate cousins. The ‘nervous smile’ is a holdover of this.

• [Anonymous]

  check out the swarming behavior of starlings. cool stuff.

• [Lobster]

  Can’t you just sedate the chimp without putting it to sleep? That’s what I do whenever I have need of a stationary chimp, which is surprisingly often in my line of work (sharks are naturally curious about chimps).

  • [smgrady]

    Sedatives and anesthetics interfere with normal brain activity. They’re interested in behavior, not how anesthetics modulate brain activity (my line of work).

    “…I have need of a stationary chimp … sharks are naturally curious about chimps.”
    lol, wow. you win 1 internets.

• [smgrady]

  Is any of this really a surprise?

  Maggie: you pick very interesting subjects. Please give them a bit more depth.

• [Anonymous]

  I found this via “stumbleupon”, as I love animals dearly and am constantly amazed by what I find in them daily, I just want to say that communication can not be just retrieving information from the actions of “x”. More appropriately it must be that information is exchanged, intrepreted, understood, and replied too between “x” and “y”.

  As evidence there was a story about pigeons using water fountains in parks of major cities. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1206608/Birds-feather-drink-The-pigeons-help-sup-water-fountain.html How could a group of birds possibly orchestrate these actions without communication, or talking? Body language simply is not capable of this type of action. All animals communicate. Wether it’s sound or movement or both (as it is with human beings). There is more evidence in the world to say they do talk than they don’t.

• [Anonymous]

  Any ideas on how to tell my cats that when my new greyhound wags and whimpers at them she is not trying to eat them? She just LOVES it when they run for the basement, but I’m worried they will be permanently scarred.

• [ablebody]

  i just imagined that centuries of portraits of people smiling are basically records of anxiety.

• [Falcon_Seven]

  “Obviously, their real-life equivalents aren’t sitting down to chat, vocally, about Yeats over a nice cup of tea.”
  However, they could be discussing Wittgenstein.

  • [The Lizardman]

    The tractatus possibly but I doubt his later work would be part of their discussion