Do animals talk?

Anastasie Manojlović

According to the Oxford dictionary talking means; “to say things; to speak in order to give
information or to express ideas or feelings.” Animals have different communication system they
use to convey messages or even some primitive emotions as hunger or anger, but do they talk?
Systems of communication that animals use can be visual, auditory, tactile, or chemical
(pheromones). For instance, ants use pheromones to inform other ants that there is danger
nearby or dogs that mark their territory with their urine. Birds use auditory signals to warn
others or to attract mates. Some birds use bird songs to convey messages that other birds can
comprehend. Monkeys cry out for warnings, and there are even some species that have
different signals for different predators to inform others of danger. “A midsummer evening in a
temperate forest: male fireflies emit pulses of light from specialised organs as they fly about in
search of females. Females respond by emitting their own light pulses, which prompt males to
approach them. A dialogue of light pulses ensues until the males have located the females”
(Lewis & Cratsley, 2008). These are all examples of communication between various species
which they use for sending messages using physical “signals.”

One of the most famous examples of animal communication are bees. The bees have well-
organised colonies, and they have a way of communicating with each other about food sources
and locations. They also can react collectively to unforeseen circumstances. Karl von Frisch
(Professor of Zoology at the University of Munich) conducted research and many experiments
on bees. He concluded that they communicate through dance. “In the one dance it traces
horizontal circles from right to left, then from left to right, in succession (round dance). In the
other dance (wagging-dance) it wags its abdomen continually and cuts a figure of eight in the
following manner: it flies straight, then makes a full left turn, flies straight again, and begins a
full turn to the right, etc. After the dances, one or several bees leave the hive and go straight to
the supply spot visited by the first bee” (Animal Communication and Human Language: The
Language of the Bees, Benveniste E.). The round dance informs that the food must be sought
close in the radius of a hundred meters from the hive, and the other dance (wagging-dance)
means that the food is at the greater distance between hundred meters and six kilometres. This
proves that bees have more complicated way of communication about food sources.
Even though animals do communicate they do not have as developed communication skills and
language as humans do. Humans communicate on a much higher level, they share their thoughts,
feelings, ideas, or anything that crosses their mind, they talk about things they never heard or seen.
Animals can send and receive messages, but those messages are usually to warn about danger, inform
about food or for mating, not as complex as humans who talk about things not related to their everyday
life. Monkeys hug, male spiders use complicated motions to notify a female that they are healthy and
have the potential to mate, and fiddler crabs wave their claws to make contact. They all have ways to
convey important messages that could save their lives.

Male whistling moths rub their wings together to produce a sound, and both females and males can
react to it, but only males can produce it and cannot be taught. Which means that their
language/communication systems are innate. For example, fireflies are not instructed how to create or
interpret their light displays, they are born with an innate ability. Likewise, cowbirds lay their eggs in
another bird’s nests, so they are not raised among their species. However, they do not grow up to sound
as a bird who raised them but as a cowbird should sound. Humans do not have an innate language. If
the French baby grows up in Italy the baby would speak Italian not French. However, there seems to be
some communication systems that do happen to be innate. “Dialectal variation indicates that there has
been cultural transmission in these cases because the birds learn their dialect from hearing other birds
singing, killer whales learn from hearing the clicking and whistling of other killer whales, and
chimpanzees learn from seeing other chimpanzees using the specific gestures. These behaviors are not
genetically encoded: if a young killer whale is raised in a pod of whales it is not related to, it will learn the
communication system of the pod it is living with, not the communication system of its mother’s pod.”
(Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics, 12th Edition)

Clarifying the definition of talking means that animals do not talk, because they do not have the ability
to express their ideas, they cannot talk about things that are not real or anything made up. However,
they do have the ability to share information about important things.

SOURCES:

Lewis & Cratsley, 2008

Animal Communication and Human Language: The Language of the Bees, Benveniste E.
Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics, 12th Edition