Sample – Animal Languages

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 chimpanzee 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 chimpanzees 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. 2 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. Gorilla Koko, 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 gorillas 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. Bonobo Kanzi, 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 Yerkish, 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. 3 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.

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