We already know primates and corvids have developed sign language to communicate with humans. If you've been reading some of my diaries, you probably also know dogs can develop sign language to communicate with one another and with people, and even with cats. Did you know...
But First, A Word From Our Sponsor:
Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board. Just click on the Spinning Top™ to make a submission. Look for the Spinning Top™ to pop up in diaries posts around Daily Kos.
Make sure that you include the direct link to the comment (the URL), which is available by clicking on that comment's date/time. Please let us know your Daily Kos user name if you use email so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we can include that as well. The diarist poster reserves the right to edit all content.
Please come in. You're invited to make yourself at home! Join us beneath the doodle...
|
Did you know fish communicate with sign language not just with their own species, but across aquatic species?
Obviously, the most important signs are the ones that lead to survival. For fish, that's food. They cooperate to find and eat their prey. That's pretty awesome.
While this is an awesome April Fool's joke, the octopus is incredibly intelligent. It's not human intelligence because the octopus is not human and didn't evolve in a human biosphere. This is why the octopus teams up with the coral trout to hunt prey, and not someone like me. What the octopus wants is not what we expect. But it can communicate with us - or we can communicate with it, and obviously, the octopus can communicate with other octopi and with some fish (the coral trout, for example).
Fish are not only capable of communicating with one another and across species, they are willing to be the ones to open the lines of communication.
Anecdotally, I once had a betta that was able to communicate a few things. At least, I think we did. He would indicate which food he wanted, and if he wanted to play the little ball games. He started the ball games, I didn't teach them to him. A little plastic bead fell into his bowl, and he would play with it, batting it about and chasing it. Occasionally, he'd bat it out of the bowl, and would stare at it intently then go to the surface and stare at me until I gave him the bead back. Then he'd start batting it out so I'd return it, like a toddler dropping a toy for you to pick up, over and over. So we developed ball games with that bead.
He was communicating what food he wanted, and what games to play. I was very sad when he died - spontaneous freezing in the middle of summer one year. But that's a tale for another diary.
Elephants have not just a huge vocabulary, there's an online Elephant/English dictionary. They have a vast number of signals and vocalizations o communicate with one another, and humans are learning their language and using it to learn to talk with them. Elephant language and humor is much closer to human than octopus language is - we share the same biosphere - we're land mammals. The octopus evolved as a sea creature.
Watching the squirrels, birds, and other animals that visit my yard, and observing and interacting with the critters we've had live with - ferrets, dogs, cats, rabbits, hedgehogs, tarantulas, betta fish, geese, pigs, parakeets, iguanas, koi, mice, gerbils, and rats - they all comunicate.
I don't know why and where the concept developed that animals were dumb. I think it more likely that humans were arrogant - assuming animals were dumb because they lacked the physical attributes that allowed them to speak as we do, making the same sounds we do.
But they're not.
Animals are amazingly intelligent in their sphere, communicating the things they know are important to them. That's not necessarily what's important to us. Their communication involves survival - food, shelter, danger, sex, love. And it's all about them and others in their species. Cross-species communication comes from fulfilling one another's needs - like the coral trout and the octopus.
Like dogs and people.
When we do meet creatures that live on worlds other than Earth, we need to keep the lessons we are learning as we learn to communicate with the different species on our native world. Other animals who communicate with us have learned that lesson - that they need to find a common ground and to communicate with us concerning our needs. They attempt to make it about mutual needs, but we humans have been rather slow.
Alex and Beatrice Gardner were probably considered crazy to try to communicate with Washoe, the chimp they taught to speak with American Sign Language.
John Lilly sort of got it right with his attempts to learn dolphin except when he failed to learn Dolphin, he tried to teach English to dolphins.
The problem with them is that they mostly concentrated on teaching our methods of communication rather than working to learn the other creature's methods and then searching for common ground.
Then, of course, some animals just don't care to talk with us - we provide nothing of benefit to them, no mutual needs. Or maybe, we're just to arrogant to notice they are trying to communicate with us, just that we wanted to communicate with them.
I wonder if non-Earth creatures will feel like that, too?
Or these potential unEarthly creatures could be like dogs and willing to go the extra parsecs (I said we were slow....) to make communication between us possible.
So, I didn't apparently remember the lesson with my betta when I got Itzl.
Itzl, however, is one determined canine. He worked hard to learn the signs so he could understand me. He worked harder to make me understand that some of the signs he makes were his signs, trying to tell me things I was too oblivious to notice. Once I realized he had his own mind and own opinions and had things he wanted to say that had nothing to do with his job, I felt like I'd broken the Rosetta Stone.
And I learned I had a very snarky little dog, who makes snide comments about the people we meet. And sometimes insults.
We can't hold conversations about novels or movies, since Itzl lives mostly in the moment. He does like to gossip, though, about people, mostly. Not their motives, because I don't think he understands motives, or cares about them. But he will pass judgement on their actions, and hold grudges if he didn't like what they did.
(Itzl telling me that my boss was coming down the hall:)
I've since learned to listen to dogs, instead of talking at them and giving them commands. Itzl works much smarter now that we communicate rather than command and demand.
Scientists are beginning to explore inter-species communication. They are learning that a great many more animals communicate within their species than we'd ever dreamed of - even worms communicate. They are beginning to start with at least acknowledging that the animals may already have a language of their own, as different as it may be from ours.
Maybe they will discover how to truly listen to and talk with the many intelligent creatures inhabiting Earth.
I just hope, when we make First Contact, the scientists remember that the non-Earth creatures are like the octopus - developed in a completely different environment. Instead of leaving the burden of communication between us to them, we should spend some time thinking about them and their favored methods of communication and working with that. Not everyone will speak English.
(1) "Referential" refers to language development, using signs to refer to certain items. ASL is a referential language, so is most communication with non-humans.
But you don't have to worry about interpretations as you enjoy tonight's Tops: Top Comments ,Top Mojo, and the ever lovely (and visually evocative) Picture Quilt:
TOP PHOTOS
April 28, 2013
Enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. Have fun, Kossacks!
|