Animal Communication 🐶 When the Dog starts to talk.
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TaraDeS — 5 months ago(October 15, 2025 04:59 PM)
Nothing new, but a passionate call for humility and acceptance of difference.
Dogs name Toys while Elephants name each other.
Animal language is more complex than we imagine.
If we really want to grasp what animals are
'saying'
,
we need to understand their communication on their terms, not ours.
Elephants drink from a pond at the Ngutuni wildlife conservancy (Kenya) October 29, 2024.
Another day, another cute story about how dogs can grasp elements of human language
and use them to communicate with us.
First, there was Mr. Waffles, the Yorkshire terrier that
"talks"
to his owners by pressing electronic buttons that were pre-programmed with words and phrases. In one of his videos, viewed more than half a million times, the pint-sized pooch stares defiantly at the camera and responds to an empty packet of treats by pressing the
"I don’t give a damn"
button. Followed by the
"bitch"
button. Bad dog, Mr. Waffles.
Waffles - The Yorkie.
Then, last month, researchers reported that some dogs can mentally categorise their toys depending on their use.
"Fetch toys"
can be distinguished from
"tug of war toys"
and retrieved appropriately.
I’m a dog owner. I fully admit to being one of the third of Britons who would rather talk to their pets than to people. At first glance, the study seems to confirm what I already knew – that my dog understands everything that I say. But while interactions like this tell us something about how smart dogs are, they barely scrape the surface of their communicative abilities.
In recent years, many parallels were drawn between animal communication and human language. We have learned, for example, that some animals have names that they use for each other. Elephants use particular vocalisations – harmonically rich, low-frequency sounds – to address key members of their group.
"Hey, Dave, over here!"
In their early months of life, bottlenose dolphins invent their own unique
"signature whistle"
, which goes on to become the name that others use to call them. During this same time period, mother dolphins communicate with their youngsters using “motherese”. Just like human mums, they adjust the frequency and pitch of the sounds to create a singsong tone thought to facilitate bonding.
Bottlenose Dolphins
Meanwhile, songbirds have different regional dialects, meaning the sparrows near me sing with the avian equivalent of a Birmingham accent –
"All right, bab!"
And sperm whales, which use
"names"
and accents, recently showed to have their own phonetic alphabet. The gentle giants communicate with patterns of clicks. By altering their rhythm, tempo, duration and number, simple units of sound can be combined to generate complexity. According to the scientists who discovered the phenomenon, this is similar to the way that humans combine sounds to form words.
Whenever these stories break, they are met with surprise.
"Aren’t animals clever?! Who’d have thought it?!"
But none of this should be surprising. All of these animals live deeply complex, rich and social lives. Sperm whales, for example, live in tight-knit female-led groups, which sometimes come together to form larger groups known as
"vocal clans"
. They hunt together, babysit for each other and work together to see off predatory orcas. Of course they have complex communication. They need it for survival.
Sperm Whales
The mistake, however, is to presume – a priori – that animal communication is anything like ours. All too often we try to crowbar animal communication into a human-centric framework, but it’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. We’ll never solve the puzzle, because there will always be a fundamental mismatch.
Just as a cuttlefish would miss the subtlety of human sarcasm, so too humans are unlikely ever to understand the full spectrum of cuttlefish communication. When they dynamically change the patterning and colour of their skin, it’s fascinating, but alien. Different animals communicate in different ways. Sure they use sound, but they also use colour, smell, electricity, vibrations and the medium of expressive dance. There is an abundance of animal communication that we miss because we don’t have the sensory organs or humility to detect it.
Cuttlefish
Human language – with names and words and syntax and grammar – is just one solution that one species has evolved to help it navigate the challenges that it faces. Non-human animals live different lives with different struggles. If we really want to grasp what animals are
'saying'
, we need to understand their communication on their terms, not ours.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/09/dogs-elephants-animal-language-complex
October 09, 2025
Well, humans also speak not only with words and grammar, but with body language and facial expressions.
This field of research fills many pages as well, getting to know ourselves better.
And then there's more…