Animal Communication and Human Langauge

Animal Communication

Animal communication is otherwise known as zoosemiotics . Whatever we call it body language is vital in communication in both animals and humans . It may or may not be accompanied by spoken language , and just as language varies from culture to culture among humans so does the language of animals vary from species to species . Such communication is defined by Sjare and Smith in their 1986 study as `the state of one animal , the sender , altering the state of another ( chapter 5 ) They also say that communication is made up of

an exchange of signals . These can include visual signals as extreme as those in fireflies who produce light signals in the dark in to attract sexual partners . Sound touch and chemical means are also used , some animals using many different ways of signaling

Some socio-biologists would analyse animal communication as being only the more or less automatic response to stimuli . This however raises the question of how much the creatures concerned understand the meaning of the signals they give and receive . This will naturally vary from species to species . Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney studied alarm signals in vervet monkeys and showed that they give different alarms according to the the presence of different types of predators - big cats , birds and snakes . The monkeys that hear the calls respond according to the type signalled . This would be very similar to how humans would behave in similar circumstances . Their studies showed that the ability to communicate with this precision develops over time , and also able to take into account the age and experience of the monkey making the signal .They were also able to show how individuals can recognise each other as described in their 1990 book , `How Monkeys See the World . The same researchers were also able to show how different members of a baboon troop have individual signals that they use when the troop are on the move . In a 1838 notebook Darwin said , He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke ' Seyfarth and Cheyney are at least at the beginning of such a venture . See `How Baboons think , yet think ' by Nicholas Wade , 2007

On the web page `You are what you gesture ' Victor Borg states that when humans meet words make up only about 5 of our communicating language Factors such as the tone which is used and other vocal factors such as the rate of speech and the volume reached makes up 38 of man 's communication , but the biggest section by far is gesture which makes up the majority

Having said this about human communication it is not surprising that creatures that don 't have the power of speech ( despite the claims of those owners whose dogs can say `Sausages ' etc ) can communicate very well including quite varied vocalizations . How they do so varies considerable from the rapid color changes of skin made by squid and other cephalopods , to the facial grimaces of the great apes . How creatures communicate...