Have you ever wondered whether animals talk to each other the same way humans do? Have you ever tried talking to your pets? Of course, there are language differences between humans and animals, but it turns out that the way animals communicate is very different from how humans communicate. This article will explore the key characteristics of animal communication and what sets human communication apart.
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Jetzt kostenlos anmeldenHave you ever wondered whether animals talk to each other the same way humans do? Have you ever tried talking to your pets? Of course, there are language differences between humans and animals, but it turns out that the way animals communicate is very different from how humans communicate. This article will explore the key characteristics of animal communication and what sets human communication apart.
Before we look at the different human and animal communication systems in detail, let's start by defining what we mean by communication.
What qualifies as communication? Communication refers to an action that aims to transmit information from one to others, either verbally or through non-verbal signals. Humans rely mostly on language to communicate, which sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. While other animals can also communicate through vocalisations, human language is unique in terms of its capability to use organised language to express complex ideas.
Animals do this through other means, e.g. the Caribbean Reef Squid changes colour to send different messages like warning others of a predator or for courting purposes.
Communication refers to an action that aims to transmit information, either verbally or through non-verbal signals (e.g. vocalisations, gestures, movements, scents or pheromones).
A key aspect of human communication is language...
Language is a communicative system that involves structuring words in a meaningful way to convey meaning.
So, according to this definition, can different ways that animals communicate be called languages? Not exactly. Animal communication usually involves signals. Whether it's an excretion of scents, pheromones, a vocalisation or a movement, these signals lack the essential features of a language. Although, some animals do communicate through means of sounds.
Now, let's look at the key characteristics of human language and animal communication.
Animals use communication to influence the actions of other individuals or encourage co-operation. Their communication is limited to signals and mostly serves a few purposes.
Based on these purposes, we can distinguish the four types of animal communication: communication for survival, reproduction, gaining or maintaining territory and obtaining food.
Karl Von Frisch is a German-Austrian researcher awarded a Nobel Prize for his fascinating findings about the communicative behaviour of honey bees. He demonstrated that bees have colour vision. As he continued his research on perceptions of the bee, he also found that bees have a strong sense of orientation and direction. This allows them to localise and communicate about food sources even kilometres away from the hive.
The Karl Von Frisch (1950) study aimed to investigate the systems that bees use to communicate about the location of food with the colony. To observe the behaviour of honey bees, he placed bees in a hive with glass windows and dishes containing sugar syrup in different locations. As the bees visited the feeding sites, they were marked with coloured dots to distinguish which site they were coming back from.
Von Frisch found that bees performed elaborate dances, which appeared to communicate to other bees where they found the food. The pace at which they waggled indicated how far away was the food, and the angle at which they performed these movements in relation to a vertical line indicated the direction of the food source.
These findings led Von Frisch to conclude that bees use a set of movements to communicate the exact location of a food source to other colony members.
Even though we use language in everyday life, we often don't think about how complex it is. Language is universal across cultures and unique to our species. The languages spoken across the globe differ, but interestingly, these languages share similar characteristics. Charles Hockett, in 1960, identified up to 16 features of language, some of which are shared and some that differ from human language to primitive communication.
The list of characteristics was later developed further by Jean Aitchison (1983). Aitchison argued that there are 11 essential characteristics of language. She considered four of these criteria as particularly unique to human language.
The first criterion is displacement, which refers to the human ability to exchange information about abstract, hypothetical and distant ideas. Animal communication is limited to mostly current or near past events.
While impales use sounds and movements to communicate about an immediate threat, they don't communicate about a threat that happened two weeks ago. Reminiscing about distant events or planning future behaviour is outside the scope of most animal communication systems, but it's quite prevalent in humans.
Another key characteristic is structure dependence. Human language, such as conversations or the sentences that we construct, all follow rules. The rules organise information so that others can understand what we are trying to say. While the rules of grammar are different depending on the language spoken, each has the requirement of grammatical sense.
Some, such as Noam Chomsky, proposed that the potential to acquire grammar is genetically imprinted in our brain.
In contrast, animals don't organise different communicative elements in a structured manner and tend to communicate using simple signals.
The second criterion is semanticity. Human language uses abstract symbols and sounds that don't have any meaning in itself to communicate meaningful messages.
For example, the word “book” doesn't sound or look like a book, yet English speakers can understand what it refers to.
Animals have a set of ways to signal messages like “Danger!”, “Food!”, “I am stronger!” or “I have superior genes!”. However, their signals lack the semanticity we see in human language, which has a word for almost an infinite number of concrete things and abstract or hypothetical ideas.
Creativity is another important criterion of human language. Due to the large number of words and the way they can be organised to communicate meaning, we can create an infinite number of sentences to express what we wish to say. This unlimited capacity differs from animals' limited capacity, such as the release of a specific hormone to convey a message.
There are endless linguistic ways to communicate about the same event. For example, we can say, "I went to see Minions with my mate", "I went to see Minions with my best mate", " Today I went to see Minions with my mate Freddie" and so on.
Each of the sentences above is different, and yet they basically communicate the same message. The content of a sentence allows us to add endless detail and increase the complexity of our expression.
The remaining seven of the 11 characteristics of language identified by Aitchison are common for both human and animal communication. However, it is important to note that while all these features are present in human communication, certain species of animals tend only to possess one or a few of these characteristics.
Let's take a look at these characteristics!
So, in a nutshell, what makes the behaviours that animals use to communicate different to how we communicate? One major difference is that humans rely mostly on verbal communication, while animals use mainly movements, vocalisations and scents to communicate. Even though we also use body language and gestures, most of our communication involves language.
Animal communication is also limited both in terms of the complexity of expressions and the content that can be expressed. Animals communicate about events happening now or close in time, mostly for survival purposes. In contrast, the human language gives us infinite ways to talk about an infinite number of things. We can talk about events far into the future, hypothetical situations, as well as our subjective reality and internal states.
Human language is also creative and organised. We have a way of expressing almost every aspect of our experience, which is not so evident in animal communication. There is only so much detail that a honey bee can communicate to help others localise food. They don't have movements that indicate altitude or objects that others will pass on their way to the food source, like mountains or flowers.
Aitchison (1983) proposed four unique criteria distinguishing human language from animal communication. These include displacement, structure dependence, semanticity and creativity.
Similarities between human and animal communication include using the vocal-auditory channel, arbitrariness, cultural transmission, spontaneous use and turn-taking.
Aitchison (1983) proposed four unique criteria distinguishing human language from animal communication. These include displacement, structure dependence, semanticity and creativity.
Animal communication is limited to signals and mainly serves a few purposes, including survival, reproduction, and obtaining territory and food. In contrast, human communication is much more complex and relies on language.
Similarities between human and animal communication include using the vocal-auditory channel, arbitrariness, cultural transmission, spontaneous use, turn-taking, duality and intention-reading.
We can't understand animals because they don't communicate using human language and use other means.
The four types of animal communication include communication for survival, reproduction, territory, and food purposes.
How do we define communication?
Communication refers to an action that aims to transmit information, either verbally or through non-verbal signals (e.g. vocalisations, gestures, movements, scents and pheromones).
How can language be defined?
Language is a communicative system that involves structuring words in a meaningful way to convey meaning.
What does human communication rely on the most?
Language
What is the purpose of animal communication?
Animals use communication to influence the actions of other individuals or encourage co-operation.
What are the four types of animal communication?
The four types of animal communication include communication for survival, reproduction, territory, and food purposes.
Which Nobel Prize winner studied the perceptions and communicative behaviours of bees?
Karl Von Frisch
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