The possession and non-possession of language has historically determined our ethical obligation to animals (Dillon, 2011). Descartes believed that only humans can use language creatively: no animal is capable of “arranging various words together and forming an utterance from them” (Coren, 2006). In the novel Under the Skin, humans are factory-farmed by aliens; in a pivotal scene we see that the humans in processing plants have their tongues forcibly removed. It is by disguising the fact that we have language that the aliens are able to treat us as ‘vegetables on legs’ (Faber, 2000). The assumption that only humans possess language therefore has significant welfare consequences: it is only by ‘hearing’ animals that we are compelled to meet their needs. This essay critiques that assumption, exploring how animals communicate – with us and with each other – and the potential limitations of an anthropocentric approach.
Speech impediments
Not so long ago, conscious thought was assumed impossible in the absence of grammatical language, classical philosophers like Descartes maintaining that animals cannot think, reason nor speak. However Roth posits that the emergence of our syntactical and grammatical language 100,000 years ago unfairly amplified human intelligence, making cognition and communication much easier (2017). By contrast, “in animals, where language is not possible, it is difficult even to know what evidence would be sufficient to prove or disprove the existence of consciousness” (Coren, 2006). Non-human animals lack the anatomical physiology for grammatical speech, so by selecting linguistic capacity as a marker of consciousness Descartes “stacked the deck against all animals other than man” (Coren, 2006)[1].
In the 1970s Beatrix and Allen Gardner attempted to counter this physiological disadvantage by teaching American Sign Language (ASL) to their chimpanzee, Washoe. Washoe learned over 150 signs, formed basic sentences, followed simple grammatical principles and expressed novel ideas. Premack (1971, 1983) further demonstrated that chimpanzees can learn grammar and syntax: his chimp Sarah could respond to long, complex ‘sentences’ (Mazur, 2015). Later, Pepperberg showed that Alex, an African grey parrot, could vocally label more than 100 objects of different colours, shapes and materials, requesting these objects (‘I want X’) and quantifying numbers of them (1999).
Coren (2006) compares language in non-humans with the early stages of language development in children, which may not demonstrate advanced language production but certainly show relatively complex language comprehension. Research suggests that dogs can communicate with us at about the same level as two-year old children, Kaminsky (2017) demonstrating that they produce significantly more facial expressions and vocalisations when facing a human, unaffected by the visibility of a food stimulus. Similarly, Coren shows that dogs do not wag their tails at inanimate objects like food, but only when they have the attention of other dogs or humans (2006). There are thus clear behaviours in dogs that serve for communication rather than being instinctive responses to stimuli. Consequently, when people dock the tails of dogs they block a vital communication channel, impairing their interactions with humans and other canines.
A child’s spontaneous acquisition of speech is considered a keystone of human language. Yet recent studies show that other mammals can reproduce heard vocalizations: groups of fruit bat pups exposed to different playbacks of bat calls established separate dialects, demonstrating sophisticated vocal learning skills (Prat et al., 2017). Nevertheless, a criticism of animal language abilities is that a child’s language skills steadily increase with age whereas a chimpanzee’s mean level of utterance levels off at about 1.5 signs per sequence. Following observations of chimpanzee ASL, Terrace concluded that chimps can only learn limited grammar, more often stringing signs together randomly (1979).
Speaking a different language
When Savage-Rumbaugh taught bonobos to type on a 400-key lexigram keyboard (1986), the primates used it to ‘gossip’ rather than to gain any material reward. They were not ‘trained’: they were simply given the means to join the conversation. But what if Savage-Rumbaugh was actually being given the means to join theirs? Perhaps primates normally have better means to communicate with one another than using our language, and it is short-sighted to judge an animal’s consciousness by its use of human language skills. Broom recently spoke about how we like to study animals that can use words because “if they will use the things that we use, that’s extremely convenient for researchers” (Broom, 2017). Indeed, Pepperberg showed that Alex’s cognitive abilities actually far excelled his ‘linguistic’ talents, the parrot able to categorize different groups of objects based on their colour, shape and material (1987).
The classical philosophers took “no account of the fact that what they call ‘animal’ could look at them, and address them from down there, from a wholly other origin” (Derrida, 2008). The level at which animals communicate with one another – their ‘interpersonal intelligence’ – is more subtle and difficult to measure than the anthropocentric study of language and number skills. Bees perform nightly ‘waggle dances’ to show other bees learned routes to honey (Riley et al., 2005) while dogs, with their superior sense of smell (10,000 to 100,000 times better than humans), can tell the age, sex, health and psychological state of a fellow canid – as well as what he/she had for lunch – with a quick sniff of its urine (Coren, 2006). Chemical communication is also demonstrated in the alarm signals of ants, while other animals are capable of auditory communication far outside of our own abilities. Bats signal to one another via high frequency echolocation, while whales and elephants use infra-sounds (too low for us to hear) to communicate over long distances. Certain fish can communicate electronically, while animal movements that are ‘scarcely distinguishable to us’ often have considerable significance for the animals themselves (Manning and Dawkins, 2012).
As Beston famously wrote of animals, “they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear” (1928). Yet now we are beginning to develop tools to listen to these sensory voices. Manning (2012) points out the ‘ironic’ title of Cousteau’s scuba diving book The Silent World now that underwater microphones have revealed the ‘amazing sounds’ produced by marine animals[2].
Conclusion
New research shows animals communicate with one another[3] in ways outside our immediate comprehension. We can no longer use the absence of language as an excuse to ignore the existence of animal needs and desires, given that many animals use “senses beyond our direct knowledge and we may need to use special instruments to understand their worlds” (Manning, 2012:177). As we better understand the unique ways in which animals communicate, we must judge their abilities by different, non-anthropocentric criteria and thus re-evaluate our ethical responsibility to them.
References
Beston, H. 1928. The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod., New York: Holt, Selwyn & Blount Ltd.
Broom, D. 2017. How clever are the animals we keep? Public Lecture. Stripe Lecture Theatre, University of Winchester.
Coren, S. 2006. The Intelligence of Dogs: A guide to the thoughts, emotions, and inner lives of our canine companions, Simon and Schuster.
Derrida, J. 2008. The Animal That Therefore I Am, Fordham Univ Press.
Dillon, S. 2011. “It’s a Question of Words, Therefore”: Becoming-Animal in Michel Faber’s Under the Skin. Science Fiction Studies, 38, 134-154.
Faber, M. 2000. Under the Skin, Canongate Books.
Kaminski, J., Hynds, J., Morris, P. & Waller, B. M. 2017. Human attention affects facial expressions in domestic dogs. Scientific Reports, 7.
Maninger, N., Mendoza, S. P., Williams, D. R., Mason, W. A., Cherry, S. R., Rowland, D. J., Schaefer, T. & Bales, K. L. 2017. Imaging, Behavior and Endocrine Analysis of “Jealousy” in a Monogamous Primate. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 5.
Manning, A. & Dawkins, M. S. 2012. An Introduction to Animal Behaviour. 6th ed ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mazur, J. E. 2015. Learning and Behavior, Psychology Press.
Nelson, B. 2017. Beluga whale learns dolphin language. Mother Nature Network MNN.com [Online]. [Accessed November 12, 2017 2017].
Payne, R. S. & McVay, S. 1971. Songs of humpback whales. Science, 173, 585-597.
Pepperberg, I. M. 1987. Acquisition of the same/different concept by an African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus): learning with respect to categories of colour, shape and material. . Animal Learning and Behaviour, 15, 423–432.
Pepperberg, I. M. 1999. The Alex studies: cognitive and communicative abilities of Grey parrots. PMC free article, Harvard University Press; Cambridge, MA.
Prat, Y., Azoulay, L., Dor, R. & Yovel, Y. 2017. Crowd vocal learning induces vocal dialects in bats: Playback of conspecifics shapes fundamental frequency usage by pups. PLOS Biology.
Premack, D. 1971. Language in chimpanzee. Science, 172, 808-822.
Premack, D. & Premack, A. J. 1983. The Mind of an Ape, W. W. Norton & Co.
Riley, J. R., Greggers, U., Smith, A. D., Reynolds, D. R. & Menzel, R. 2005. The flight paths of honeybees recruited by the waggle dance. Nature, 435, 205-7.
Roth, G. 2017. Evolution of the Cognitive Brain: Mammals. In: WATANABE, S., HOFMAN, M. A. & SHIMIZU, T. (eds.) Evolution of the Brain, Cognition, and Emotion in Vertebrates. Springer.
Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S. 1986. Ape Language: From conditioned response to symbol, Columbia University Press.
Terrace, H. S., Petitto, L.-A., Sanders, R. J. & Bever, T. G. 1979. Can an ape create a sentence? Science, 206, 891-902.
[1] In a recent study of monkey jealousy, the researchers qualified that they “cannot say definitively that the subjects in our experiment experienced the emotion of ‘jealousy.’ Similarly, with humans we would need verbal confirmation that participants experienced this emotion”. Yet it is freely assumed that young children feel jealousy even if they cannot confirm this verbally (Maninger et al., 2017).
[2] Payne and McVay (1971) studied humpback whales and showed their song could be picked up by other whales several hundred kilometres away (Manning and Dawkins, 2012:155).
[3] Recently, a 4-year-old captive beluga whale swapped her beluga calls for dolphin calls after living with dolphins for just a few months. It was “as if she had learned how to speak dolphin,” demonstrating sophisticated interspecies communication (Nelson, 2017).
