Animal Language and Communication discussion

[Exalt]

This thread was spawned from a question I had in the proper question thread.

It is certainly the case that other species (unless you count Neanderthals as a different species, in which case they may have been able to) do not have the complexity of language and communication that humans do (in fact, the pre-history and history border is defined by the invention of written records). However, other species are not completely devoid of the ability to convey specific messages: we have done substantial work with teaching sign language to primates, the psittacopasserae taxon contains many members who vocalize quite a bit (with psittacaformes and ravens being able to at least mimic human speech, though I have no idea if they can learn what they are saying. There is an anecdote that Andrew Jackson's parrot had to be removed from his funeral after the parrot in question began swearing, but that is, again, an anecdote, and nobody from that time is alive to even verify this), and meerkat sentinels even have different calls for different threats.(Rauber and Manser, 2017.)

In short, any discussion on animal communication would apply here, be it how it originated, a given species message capacity, or speculation, would apply here.

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Rauber, R., Manser, M. Discrete call types referring to predation risk enhance the efficiency of the meerkat sentinel system. Sci Rep 7, 44436 (2017). doi.org/10.1038/srep44436

[Infinity Blade]

You've already seen this on Twitter Exalt, but for anyone else who's unaware this recent study found that African savanna mammals fear human voices more than they do lion growls.

For additional context, the researchers used playback sounds of humans vocalizing and lions growling and compared the responses of various savanna mammal species to them. They also had playback sounds of dogs barking and gunshots (as these are proxies of human presence) and birds as a non-predator control. All predator-associated noises were significantly higher than the control, but it's really human vocalizations that they fear the most. If you look at the videos in this study, you'll notice just how quickly warthogs, leopards, kudu, giraffes, etc. fled after hearing human noises. Even rhinos and elephants fled.

Fear of humans significantly exceeded the fear of lions throughout the savanna mammal community. Considering the community as a whole (Table S1), wildlife were twice as likely to run (Figure 1A; p < 0.001), and abandoned waterholes during the dry season in 40% faster time (Figure 1B; p < 0.001), upon hearing humans compared with hearing lions (for full model results see Table S2). Critically, this more powerful and all-pervasive response was specifically to hearing human vocalizations, as this differed significantly from all other treatments (all p < 0.001), whereas the responses to hunting sounds (dogs barking or gunshots) were weaker than, or on a par with, those to lions (Figure 1; Run from dogs < lions, p = 0.038; all other hunting sound vs. lion comparisons, p > 0.287; Table S2). Hearing lions or hunting sounds did inspire fear as the responses to these treatments all significantly differed from the control treatment (birds, all p ≤ 0.001; Table S2).

www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01169-7?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982223011697%3Fshowall%3Dtrue