Sample – Animal Languages

Extracts from several chapters of Animal Languages © translation Eva Meijer (citations are footnoted or included in the notes section in the original text)

From the introduction

Prairie dogs live in tunnels underneath the ground. They usually stay in the same village their whole lives, which makes it easy for predators to catch them; all they have to do is wait, and sooner or later a prairie dog will show up to find food. The prairie dogs therefore have developed a complex warning system, in which they use different sounds to describe different predators. In their calls they mention whether the predator comes from the sky or land; this is important because it asks for a different type of response, and many other nonhuman animals – ranging from vervet monkeys to chickens – do the same. The prairie dogs however do not stop there, and describe the intruder in detail. When a human approaches, they describe their species, height, the color of their hair and T-shirt, and possible attributes they might carry (such as umbrellas or guns). With dogs they also mention species, form and color, and add the speed with which the dog approaches. Their calls change meaning when the order of elements in a sentence changes, which can be compared to a simple grammar. They use verbs, nouns, and adverbs, and can they can also use these to make new combinations for unknown predators. In addition to alarm calls, they have a form of social chatter (that we not yet know much about) and some species do the jump-yip, a kind of wave that involves throwing their hands up in the air and doing a little backward jump while yelling yip, which is probably an expression of joy and enthusiasm. They are sometimes so enthusiastic that they fall over backwards. Praire dogs are not the only nonhuman animal species who express themselves in a complex manner. Dolphins and parrots call each other by their names. Fork tailed drongos mimic the calls of other animals to scare them away and then steal their dinner. In the songs of many species of birds, in elephant languages, and in skin patterns of squid, we find grammatical structures. Bats like to gossip. Border Collie Chaser learned the names of 1022 objects. Elephants in captivity sometimes start using human words to interact with the people around them; wild elephants have a word for ‘human’, which means danger. Humpback whales sing love songs that may last for twenty hours. These animals are no exception: most social animals have complex and nuanced ways of communicating with one another and with humans, using smell, gestures,

1 sounds, movements, words, glances, colors and other signals. Humans have for a long time thought that only humans use language. Recent research challenges this view, and presents us with a new perspective on other animals, and on language. This new perspective raises many philosophical questions. Can we call nonhuman animal communication language? What exactly is language, and who decides? Can we speak with other animals, and if so: how? Is human language special, or are all languages special in their own ways? Should we approach other animals differently now that we know that they use language? In my book Animal Languages (Dierentalen) I discuss these and other questions.

From chapter 1: From human language to animal languages

Gua was born in Cuba, in 1930. Psychologists Luella and Winthrop Kellogg took her into their house when she was 7,5 months old. They planned to rear her alongside their son Donald, who was 10 months old at the time. Winthrop Kellogg was interested in comparative psychology of primates, and the Kelloggs had moved to Florida to work with psychologist and primatologist Robert Yerkes of the Yerkes Primate Center. Gua was given to the center with her parents in early 1931, soon after she moved in with the Kellogg family. They used her to conduct a new type of experiment, in which they wanted to teach her to speak in human language. The aim of the study was to investigate whether language use was a product of nature or nurture. Even though Gua was a fast learner in many respects and surpassed Donald in many practical tasks, she did not learn to speak in human words. When Donald started to copy her sounds, the Kelloggs ended the experiment. Gua, who was 16 months old at the time, was taken back to the Yerkes primate center for further study, where she died of pneumonia, less than a year later. A similar experiment was conducted by scientists Keith and Catherine Hayes, who took Viki into their home and used intensive speech therapy, in which they manually manipulated her lower jaw, to teach her to voice four words: mama, papa, up and cup. Because Gua, Viki, and in other studies – similar experiments were carried out in laboratories – had not learned to speak, it was assumed that other primates either lacked the cognitive abilities to learn to speak, or were physically incapable of it, which led to a modification of the experiment: instead of speaking, chimpanzees were taught sign language. This technique was more successful. Chimpanzee Washoe was born in the wild and taken from her parents by the American Air Force, initially to be used in space experiments. Beatrix and Alex Gardner took her into their home and raised her as a human child. They dressed her in human clothes, made her dine on the table with them, took her for rides with the car, and took her to the playground.

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Washoe had books, toys, and her own toothbrush. She soon learned to use signs, with and without direct instruction – the latter by observing humans –, and invented her own: she for example combined the signs for water and bird when she saw a swan. She could also categorize nouns, and form simple sentences. When she was five, the Gardners ended the experiment and brought her to the University of Oklahoma's Institute of Primate Studies, where she lived until her death in 2007. In the University of Oklahoma's Institute of Primate Studies, Washoe learned to use around 350 different signs, which she also used to communicate her emotions and thoughts. She recognized herself in the mirror and showed self-awareness, as well as empathy with others. When new students came to work with her, she slowed down the speed with which she signed, to help them understand her. Chimpanzees were not the only primates used in these experiments. , who was born at the zoo of San Francisco, was taught to use over a thousand hand signs in Gorilla Sign Language, a modified version of American Sign Language, developed because have different hands than humans. Psychologist Francine Patterson, who taught her to use sign language, reports that Koko also understands over two thousand human words. Koko signs about her emotional state and memories, showing she has episodic memory and narrative identity; she likes to make jokes and sometimes tells lies. She is also famous because she had a pet kitten, and expressed grief when he died. , who was born at the Yerkes field station at Emory University, taught himself to sign by watching videos of Koko, something his trainer learned when he saw him sign with an anthropologist. He was taught to use lexigrams, symbols on a keyboard that are used in artificial primate language , and he has been observed speaking human words. Kanzi likes to eat omelets and to play Pac-man, and he is a good toolmaker. In other language experiments nonhuman primates were taught grammar. Chimpanzee Sarah, who was born in Africa, was taught to parse and produce streams of tokens that obeyed a simple grammar. Along with three other chimpanzees she learned to use a board with plastic symbols to analyze syntactic expressions, including if-then-else. In these language experiments, ‘language’ means human language, and nonhuman animals are used as objects of study to gain knowledge about human language. Recent research in biology and ethology however shows that many other nonhuman animal species have their own complex and nuanced species-specific ways of communicating, with members of their own and other species. These studies ask us to reconsider the cognitive capacities of other animals, but they also ask us to reconsider what language is.

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Animals and human language

Although writers and philosophers have always speculated about nonhuman animal behavior and animal minds – or the absence thereof –, animal cognition was not taken seriously in science until the end of the 19th century, when Charles Darwin began writing about animal behavior and animal minds. Darwin emphasized the continuities between species, and he saw the difference between human animal minds and the minds of other animals as a difference of degree and not a difference of kind (Darwin 1871). His approach to animal cognition was anecdotal and drew on his personal observations, as well as stories about nonhuman animal behavior, which led to criticism regarding the scientific value of his observations. In order to avoid this criticism, and to improve the study of animal cognition, psychologist Thorndike and physiologist Pavlov took the study of animal cognition to the laboratory, where they could study the reactions of nonhuman animals to stimuli, in experiments that could be repeated. In this way they studied operant conditioning and classical conditioning respectively. The design of their experiments was heavily influenced by behaviourism, both in research questions and methods, and became the standard for most research on animal behavior until the 1960’s. Behaviorism is a philosophy behind the study of behavior that uses methods from the natural sciences, and focuses on functional connections between acts and environment, aiming to predict and control behavior. In behaviorism (human and nonhuman) animal minds are studied as black boxes of which the content is not relevant; only outward reactions that can be measured have scientific value. Description of behaviors or interpretations of acts should be avoided. In the 1960’s, a cognitive revolution in the study of human minds took place, which influenced how the minds of other animals were regarded. Mental processes that were not immediately observable became part of the study of animal minds, and other animals were increasingly seen as agents with a level of cognitive complexity. The rise of ethology, animal psychology, as a scientific discipline also helped instigate this process. However, the methods used by Thorndike and Pavlov were, and are still, used widely in animal research, and the view of animal minds as black boxes has continued to influence research methods and objectives until the present day. How studies are set up, and the research questions that are asked, have great influence on the outcomes. They can reinforce anthropocentrism, and stereotypical views about nonhuman animals, for example with regard to capacities for language-use. We find an example of this in Project Nim. Following Washoe’s experiment, behavioral psychologist Herbert Terrace set out to investigate whether chimpanzees were able to learn to use grammar, or, more precisely, had an innate sense of grammar. The project was inspired by the work of linguist and philosopher Noam

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Chomsky, who argues that language use in humans is innate, and terms this innate body of genetic linguistic knowledge Universal Grammar. According to Chomsky, only humans are capable of using language. In the experiment, a chimpanzee with the name Nim Chimpsky was raised in a foster family and taught to sign. In his education much attention was given to sentences, grammar and linguistic structures. Although Nim learned to use about 125 signs and could use them in simple sentences, Terrace argued that he only learned them by operant conditioning and had no insight in what they meant. In other words, he did not learn their meaning, but simply performed a trick for a reward. This was however precisely how the experiment was set up, and how Nim was taught to sign; he had no way of showing otherwise. There are also more general problems with studying nonhuman animal cognition and language in laboratories, in experiments that treat them as objects, instead of subjects to communicate with. In laboratories, other animals are kept in captivity, often in solitary confinement, which is morally problematic. The animals have not consented to the research, and most of them do not leave the lab alive. Many of the experiments inflict pain on animals - conditioning studies are often particularly cruel, and involve withholding food or giving electric shocks – and lab animals usually suffer from stress, loneliness, emotional problems and behavioral disorders. This also leads to scientific problems. The conditions under which animals live influence the outcomes of studies. Keeping social animals alone for example, or flying animals in cages, will influence their capacities for solving problems. A recent study shows that pigeons make better decisions when they are held in groups; for studies they are usually kept in solitary confinement (NRC Handelsblad 2 december 2016) (see also Howard 1952). In the language experiments described above, both those who took place in laboratories and those in human families, the behavior of the animals involved is colored by their captivity. There is however another relevant issue at stake, and that is that language is equated with human language, while the results do aim to say something about the capacities of the nonhuman animals that are used for study. Studying capacities for speaking, signing or understanding human language in other animals can of course give us information about their ways of learning, nonhuman animal mimicry, memory, emotions and attunement to humans. Patterson for example emphasizes the understanding between her and Koko, and describes their interaction as rich and complex; human words form a bridge between their worlds in some instances, in others there is body language; eye contact is mentioned as especially important. Eye contact is also emphasized in the case of Washoe. One of her trainers had been away for a few weeks after she suffered a miscarriage, and Washoe ignored her for not coming. She decided to tell Washoe what happened. Washoe stared at her intently, then slowly made the sign for crying. Chimpanzees do

5 not cry, but she knew this is what humans do when they are sad. The trainer said that Washoe’s response to this tells her more than all words she ever spoke to her. However, these studies do not tell us much about their species-specific language skills. Amongst themselves, chimpanzees (Hobaiter and Byrne 2014) and (Genty and Zuberbühler 2014) for example use a great variety of gestures and vocalizations, many of which we do not understand in detail yet. Studying the origins of human language in nonhuman primates (or dolphins, parrots, dogs and other nonhuman animals) is furthermore often anthropocentric in nature in that it presupposes that humans are a next step in the evolution, while in fact nonhuman and human primates have mutual ancestors, and nonhuman primates have adapted to their environments in intelligent ways. Language research that sees human language as the only true language refers not only to a flawed view of nonhuman animals and their linguistic capacities: it is also based on an anthropocentric idea of language. Chomsky’s idea of a universal grammar that can only be located in human animals is part of a tradition in which human language is seen as the only language, and in which language is seen as interconnected with truth. Humanism sees human language as what creates a pure break between human and nonhuman animals. This presumes a specific view of language, which Simon Glendinning (1998, chapter 5) calls the ‘thesis of conceptual exactness’. In this view, language is the expression of objective, determinate meanings which man alone can grasp (1998:77). Developing a non-anthropocentric view of language asks for taking into account these ambiguities, and for understanding that we as humans are not the only creatures who create meaning.

From chapter 4: Clever Hans

In 1904, when he was four years old, Hans could solve multiplication and division problems, and extract square roots (Allen and Bekoff 1999:26, Despret 2004). He could spell words and detect intervals in music, as well as discriminate tones and colors. Hans, who was a horse, answered questions humans asked him by tapping his right front hoof on the ground. When local newspapers began writing about Hans and his human, Wilhelm von Osten, many people came to the courtyard where he exhibited his talents. Some of them were convinced he was a genius, others thought that he, or rather his human, was a fraud. Von Osten was insulted by the suggestions of fraud and formed a commission, consisting of a veterinarian, a circus manager, a Cavalry officer, several schoolteachers, and the director of the Berlin zoological gardens, to

6 investigate the case. It turned out that Hans also answered questions correctly in the absence of Von Osten, and psychologist Oskar Pfungst was enrolled to solve the mystery. Pfungst soon found out that although he could not detect any, Hans did pick up signs, because when the human who asked the question did not know the answer, Hans also did not know how to answer. Pfungst continued his investigations and finally discovered that the humans who questioned Hans nodded slightly when he tapped the right number, without being aware of it, which allowed Hans to give the correct answer1. Hans clearly was an intelligent horse, but his intelligence lay on another level than the one investigated: Hans learned to read the movements of skin and muscles of humans visually, which enabled him to give the rights answers. He also trained the humans he worked with (Despret 2004). By responding to some cues and not to others, he taught humans how to communicate with him. Vinciane Despret (2004) describes this process as a mutual attunement; through bodily communication, part of which is intentional and part of which is not, human and horse learn to read each other. For Despret, the phenomenon of attunement is a positive research method, which allows scientists to collect data beyond the animal as object of research, that sees and shows the nonhuman animal in question as subject. Close interaction with other animals thus ‘produces a type of insight which is not reducible to the classic canons of scientific knowledge- production’ (Candea 20132). The scientists who investigated Hans did not share her opinion, and while the public still came in large numbers to watch Hans perform his tricks, scientists in fields such as cognitive and social psychology developed experiments that were double-blind, meaning that neither the experimenter nor the subject knows the condition of the subject, and the predicted responses. Len Howard had a different opinion about how to study animals. In Birds as Individuals (1952) and Living with Birds (1956), this amateur bird scientist argues against behaviorism, the dominant way of studying birds in her time, both in method and as a theoretical starting point. Howard believed that experiments in laboratories would never give us real insight into bird behavior, because captivity makes them nervous. She also argued against a mechanistic view of them, and instead saw them as conscious and intelligent individuals. In order to study their behavior in a more natural setting, Howard opened her cottage in Sussex – literally, she kept the windows open – to the birds who lived in the area. She fed them and made nesting places for

1 This insight has resulted in double blind test procedures for scientific experiments. 2 Candea (2013) describes a similar process in his anthropological research of ethologists researching meerkats in the Kalahari desert. The meerkats train the humans who observe them as much as vice versa. Candea argues that instead of avoiding contact with animals and regarding them as objects, scientists can embrace and explore the possibilities of seeing the animals as subjects with their on perspective on the matter. 7 them around and in the house. Great tits, robins, sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, finches and birds of many other species soon learned not to be afraid of her, and began to use the house as they pleased. This allowed Howard to get to know them intimately. In her work, she writes about the relations they have with one another and with her, their behaviors and personalities, which she often wrote down in the form of their biographies. Trained as a musician, she also studied and wrote down their songs. The communication between Howard and the birds was extensive and included gestures, eye contact, tone of voice, bird songs and calls, but also human words; the birds usually understood what Howard meant intuitively and otherwise learned fast. With one of the birds, a female great tit named Star, Howard began an experiment that reminds us of the story of Clever Hans. One morning, instead of giving Star her daily nut, Howard told her to tap for it. Star immediately understood what was asked from her and rapped out two taps on a wooden screen frame with her beak, copying Howard’s speed. Howard first taught Star to tap numbers in response to her own taps, and then used spoken numbers. Star learned to count to eight in this manner. Howard could not tap fast enough to get to nine. Star sometimes refused the lessons, by holding her head up high, and at other times explicitly asked for them, by turning her beak towards the wood, or instigated them herself by tapping. Howard calls her an avian genius, because of her mathematical insight, and because she understood so well what Howard asked from her. In the experiment with Hans, Von Osten investigates human intelligence in a horse, which limits Hans’ options for responding. Even if, following Despret (2004), we understand that Hans was intelligent and that attunement makes the production of knowledge possible, Hans’ options for exercising agency were limited. He could for example not leave the experiment. Howard is interested in bird intelligence, and shows that it is not necessary to hold other animals captive, or to raise them3, in order to gain their trust, build a relationship, and conduct a counting experiment4. Howard describes how two animals of different species connect, get to know the other, and derive joy from a specific kind of communication. Where the story of Von Osten and Hans primarily seems to be one of use – or even exploitation –, Howard was genuinely moved by and interested in the birds she shared her house and life with, and vice versa, as far as we can tell

3 In contrast to her contemporary ethologist Konrad Lorenz. As Howard, Lorenz believed in living with animals and getting to know them intimately as a basis for studying them. However, he held many of them in captivity, and often hand-raised young birds he stole from their parents, which is problematic from an ethical perspective, and, as Howard shows, not necessary for studying them. 4 A skeptical reader could ask whether Howard maybe gave Star some sign that made her stop tapping at the right moment. Howard describes Star taps really fast, which is why they never get to the number nine, so it could very well be that Star really understood what was asked (later research shows birds can count). However, even though the experiment could maybe be improved, the important thing Howard shows us is that it is possible to study birds in this manner, and on a voluntary basis. 8 from their life stories. Star was free to come and go as she pleased; both she and Howard initiated the contact. In her house and garden, Howard let the birds co-shape the terms of interaction. She repeatedly mentions that the birds are quite demanding, in terms of attention, food, and interior decoration. She is willing to expand her human world to incorporate their forms of creating meaning, and actively searches for ways to build new common worlds with them, using human and bird languages. For her personally this means retreating from the human world, because humans scared the birds and had to be kept out of the garden and house as much as possible. The birds and she created a new community, by interacting, and over time. Generations of wild birds taught their children not to be afraid of Howard, so maybe one could see this as the beginning of a new interspecies culture5. In this process, language played an important role.

Living with baboons

For twenty-five years, ethologist Barbara Smuts (2001) studied baboons in Kenya and Tanzania. The baboons she came to know best were the Eburru Cliffs Troop, a group of one hundred thirty-five baboons who moved in a seventy square kilometer territory in search of food. For two years, Smuts travelled with them, from dusk to dawn, for around twelve hours a day. For several months she completely lived without other humans; later on she lived with other researchers, whom she only saw in the evenings and did not have much contact with otherwise. In the beginning of her research, Smuts tried to get as close as she could to the baboons so she could get a better view of their behavior. She approached them until they ran away from her, then stopped moving, waited until they relaxed and approached them again, but this strategy did not get her very far. After a while she began to see the signals they gave before they started to move away from her – mothers called their children, different members of the group gestured to each other – and learned to stop before she scared them. In this way, she was able to move much closer in a shorter period of time. When doing research on primates´ behaviour in the wild, scientists usually try to ignore them, in order to not let their presence near them influence their interaction. Smuts found out that ignoring them is not a neutral act:

5 Howard left her house and land to the Sussex Naturalist Trust, who did not turn it into a bird sanctuary – as promised – but sold it soon after she died. The new owner took down all the trees except the old oak tree, which still stands. The current owner has made the garden more bird friendly again, also to honor Howard’s work. 9

(A)lthough ignoring the approach of a baboon may at first sound like a good strategy, those who advised me to do so did not take into account the baboons’ insistence on regarding me as a social being. After a little while, I stopped reflexively ignoring baboons who approached me and instead varied my response depending on the baboon and the circumstances. Usually, I made brief eye contact or grunted. When I behaved in this baboon-appropriate fashion, the animals generally paid less attention to me than they did if I ignored them. It seemed that they read my signals much as they read each other’s. By acknowledging a baboon’s presence, I expressed respect, and by responding in ways I picked up from them, I let the baboons know that my intentions were benign and that I assumed they likewise meant me no harm. Once this was clearly communicated in both directions, we could relax in each other’s company. (2001) Baboons who are closely related or who are good friends sometimes ignore each other’s close presence, but under other circumstances, ignoring someone can express mistrust or tension. Smuts needed to be aware of that and to act accordingly to be able to study the baboons. Furthermore, by interacting with them, she experienced critical aspects of their society, such as hierarchy, personal space and communication, directly. Because she attended to them and adjusted her behavior, the baboons came to accept her as a social being in their midst; as a subject to communicate with instead of an object that had to be avoided. Scientists call this habituation, which implies that the baboons changed their ways to accept her as a neutral observer, but in Smuts’ experience the opposite happened: the baboons went on with their lives while she had to change her ways to be with them (see also Candea 2013, Despret 2008, Haraway 2008). By living with the baboons, experiencing their habits and daily life, Smuts became attuned to their movements, which changed her experiences of her surroundings. She felt like she was turning into a baboon: A simple example involves my reactions to the weather. On the savanna during the rainy season, we could see storms approaching from a great distance. The baboons became restless, anticipating a heavy downpour. At the same time, because they wanted to keep eating, they preferred to stay out in the open as long as possible. The baboons had perfected the art of balancing hunger with the need for shelter. Just when it seemed inevitable to me that we would all get drenched, the troop would rise as one and race for the cliffs, reaching protection exactly as big drops began to fall. For many months, I wanted to run well before they did. Then something shifted, and I knew without thinking when it was time to move. I could not attribute this awareness to anything I saw, or heard

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or smelled; I just knew. Surely it was the same for the baboons. To me, this was a small but significant triumph. (2001) In living with the baboons, Smuts kept her distance. She “spoke baboon” and the baboons did their best to understand her, even though she had an “outrageous human accent”, they had a mutual understanding. But she did not build close relationships with them, something she did do with her dog companion Safi (Smuts 2001). After she adopted Safi from an animal shelter, Smuts decided not to train Safi, but to communicate with her as an equal: using words, nonverbal vocalizations, body language, gestures, and facial expressions. Safi and Smuts are both sensitive to the other and reach a high degree of understanding and intimacy. Because Safi has an “inherent sense of appropriate behavior in different circumstances”, Smuts can take her almost anywhere off leash. In the city, she will make most decisions; outside Safi usually decides where to go and what to do. If they disagree, they meet somewhere in the middle.

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