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What I find fascinating about this is that there are various species which have tackled human speech with at least some success (both actively and passively), w
by masswerk 6y ago
What I find fascinating about this is that there are various species which have tackled human speech with at least some success (both actively and passively), while, conversely, we are apparently rather bad at participating in their communicative acts (like, imitating utterances in a meaningful way). Is it just for a lack of interest on our side, or are we lacking something else?
Edit, regarding "something else": Apparently, we are able to recognize individuals of other primate species by face at a very early age, but lose this ability soon (even before we acquire speech), probably in favor of other social abilities. Which may be an indication for a high degree of intraspecies specialication regarding our communicative abilities.
- jimmaswell 6y agoWe can do some bird calls decently.
- FridayoLeary 6y agoMaybe a bit off-topic, but here are some examples of humans communicating with animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
- 867-5309 6y agothose are quite specific and questionable cases, usually involving neglect perhaps more pertinent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93animal_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93animal_communica... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_animal#Possibility_of_animal_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_animal#Possibility_of_...
- loopz 6y agoYou can do dog language. Many people do. It's not about barking or asserting dominance.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gizmo686 6y ago> Apparently, we are able to recognize individuals of other primate species by face at a very early age, Something very simmilar happens with language. Babies are able to distinguish speach sounds of all languages, but quickly lose the ability to percieve distinctions that are not present in their "native" language (native in quotes because this happens before they have made a single utterence)
- flir 6y agoI believe they make all the noises, too? But as they zero in on a single language, some get abandoned.
- PicassoCTs 6y agoI always wondered if we would try to bridge the gap what would happen? Imagine a whale ambassador, driving around in a huge half-tracked aquarium, holding speeches about what the fishing fleets currently are doing is murder.
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoI’m sure any skilled hunter would argue differently. Just watch Meat Eater on YouTube for use of animal sound mimicary ant it’s use in hunting.
- masswerk 6y agoCertainly, but isn't this more like a replay, is it actually suitable for interaction?
- amilios 6y agoI mean, this is the same thing that the whales are doing though. What's the difference? In both cases it's just mimicry.
- update 6y agoapparently, turkeys have a pretty understandable language. There's a documentary, My Life as a Turkey [1]; he was able to decipher what each call meant (e.g. which squawk meant "snake" and which one meant "eagle"). So, if you were walking with a turkey, and you saw a snake and wanted to warn it about it, you could, in theory, communicate with it. [1] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/my-life-as-a-turkey-introduction/7268/ https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/my-life-as-a-turkey-introduc...
- CyanBird 6y agoAnd these probably would vary by region, just like how whales, dolphins and orcas have different languages too That's really cool, I didn't knew turkeys did that
- colechristensen 6y agoThere are degrees, a whole spectrum between tape-loop mimicry to a high fidelity sharing of mental states when it comes to language. Mimicry with context is a good way (the only way?) to develop an understanding of language.
- proc0 6y agoYeah but there's something different about this. Given how smart whales are, this must also have some form of awareness as to what they're doing. Parrots mimic words and phrases and focus on the micro-pronunciations. This feels like the whale is doing an impression of humans in a conversation.
- monocasa 6y agoThere's strong implications that we as humans have dedicated wetware hardware for streaming out speech from the data structures in our mind. That hardware seems to be bandwidth constrained to about 39 bits per second. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/human-speech-may-have-universal-transmission-rate-39-bits-second https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/human-speech-may-hav... It makes sense that other animals may be able to cargo cult some of the underlying mechanical representations of speech, but would lack the neural hardware that propelled us to dominance on the incredible short time spans of human history and prehistory.
- brigandish 6y agoIsn't it the absence of hands that has held them back? (from dominance) Having hands plus less of or less good neural hardware means less dominance, as we see with our simian cousins, yet having the greatest brain on the planet wouldn't provide dominance without the ability to fabricate things.
- monocasa 6y agoBears and raccoons have very dexterous hands.
- brigandish 6y agoInteresting, but they also don’t have the brain of a dolphin. We’re the ones who happened to get both.
- Gauge_Irrahphe 6y agoI see no reason for that, it seems more like a pragmatic choice of reliability over capacity. (in other words to make speech comprehensible in noise)
- monocasa 6y agoThere are other studies that show we can understand speech at a much higher rate. The critical bandwidth constraint seems to be on stream out, not stream in.
- warent 6y ago> Is it just for a lack of interest on our side, or are we lacking something else? A combination of the two probably. I communicate with my pet cat by mimicking her different kinds of meows, hisses, and purrs. It makes it a lot easier because it's very obvious to me she understands that language, but of course it's not perfect It seems unlikely I'm the only person who does this. Probably a lot of people speak to their pets in the animal's own language.
- WalterBright 6y agoThere are dogs that have vocabularies of several hundred words. People should breed those together, rather than the incomprehensibly stupid existing breed characteristics.
- greesil 6y agoSmart dogs are working dogs. If they've got no work, they'll get up to bad things usually because you've left them in your house all day. If you want a pet, get a dumb dog. Or, a very lazy breed, like a greyhound.
- rangibaby 6y agoAgreed. I think people forget that smart animals are smart enough to do bad things because they feel like it
- Talanes 6y agoI had a particularly smart and runty beagle when I was a kid that watched the cats jump the fence once, and then worked out that she could leave whenever she wanted.
- hackflip 6y agoI had a super smart poodle mix growing up, and it was smart enough to easily open the latch on its cage from the inside with its tongue. It also knew how to rearrange chairs in order to climb onto the dinner table. The ones that are too smart outsmart the owners, which some dog owners see as a bad thing.
- humaniania 6y agoI really hope that people are working on machine learning projects for animal communication. If you listen to crows and ravens in the wild it seems clear that there are patterns. I would also like to see technology interfaces developed for animal use. I am worried that much of the natural language development that would occur from frequent interaction is being held back by the social isolation of most species that humans keep as pets. Maybe humans need to engineer the languages and teach them to the species?
- momirlan 6y agoApparently horses have a body language.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoSo do dogs: for example, if you do something that makes them stressed, they use calming signals such as licking their own lips or yawning.
- masswerk 6y agoAnd it seems, we are much better at linking to this than to audible utterances. Compare the various "whisperers".
- BeFlatXIII 6y agoThey’re also incredibly adept at reading human body language and emotional state. Horses with the gift of clairvoyance read subtle shifts in weight of their rider and know to jump or turn left before the rider says so or uses the reins. I forget which book it’s in, but there’s an often-repeated tale of a horse who learned to do sums and could add numbers even without his owner in sight. It was eventually discovered that he read the anticipation of his observers and knew to stop stomping his hoof once they relaxed after peak tension.
- quercusa 6y agoClever Hans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
- smcameron 6y ago> we are able to recognize individuals of other primate species by face at a very early age, but lose this ability soon I don't know if I buy this. We can recognize individual dogs and cats that we know easily, even reliably distinguishing between very homogeneous looking variants (various golden retrievers that look incredibly similar to one another. I've seen zillions of golden retrievers but would never mistake any of them for my childhood pet.) Why should primates be different than dogs and cats? I suspect it is only because almost nobody has more than passing views of individual primates. I would buy that we cannot easily recognize individual primates that are strangers to us, just as we cannot recognize individual dogs and cats that are strangers to us. Give us half an hour with a primate and I think we'd recognize them just fine.
- masswerk 6y agoAs I know it, there are tests with babies, where they react to primate individuals, they have seen before, just like to humans they have already seen, and are able to identify strangers. However, this ability is soon lost and the "in-group" focuses to humans only. I haven't a source link on this, but there should be some documentaries on early development on YT (or similar platforms) covering this.
- colechristensen 6y agoA lot of studies like this are done very poorly and should always be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. One immediate issue that comes up is infants can barely see at all, born with incompletely developed brains, the neural machinery that translates sensory input to perception develops with the help of the actual sensory input... it could very well be that babies stop reacting to other primates in the same way when they can see well enough to tell the difference. (just one guess of many potential issues with topics like this)
- masswerk 6y agoWell, I wouldn't deem it that unconceivable. It's a somewhat sad, but well known fact that we do narrow this "in-group" even more to the effect that we are not that good at identifying individuals of ethnic groups, we're not so familiar with. It may be well that we start with a broad, hard-wired concept and refine this by adaptation to the given environment. (It may be interesting, how developments would go with an actual "wild child".) Edit: I always liked to think that the stereotypical alien face somewhat resembles this blueprint (plus excessive light bleed as we must have experienced it at an early age).
- daurinhack 6y agoShaun Ellis seems to communicate wih wolf alright. Also i believe quite a few people in the world knows how to express the "this territory is claimed, don't come around here" howl message. national geographic about him : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eerUnxonS-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eerUnxonS-I
- KineticLensman 6y ago> we are able to recognize individuals of other primate species by face at a very early age, but lose this ability soon I don't buy this. I visit the Primate Rescue Centre (Monkey World) in Dorset, UK, and can recognise several individual chimps and orangutans by their facial features (especially if you include ears). Discriminators include size of brow ridges, facial colouration, distance between nose and mouth, eye separation, etc etc. Here are some facial shots of several individuals to illustrate the range of variations. https://monkeyworld.org/our-primates/primate-groups/bachelor-chimpanzees/ https://monkeyworld.org/our-primates/primate-groups/bachelor... https://monkeyworld.org/our-primates/primate-groups/hananyas-chimpanzees/ https://monkeyworld.org/our-primates/primate-groups/hananyas... If you factor in body mass and musculature and other bodily features the differences between individuals can be dramatic.
- w0de0 6y agoIf you’ll permit me, your identification sounds very much like a conscious exercise in reason: calling out and remembering unique physical features as mnemonic devices. That’s different than the subconscious facial recognition our brains pull off for humans; I doubt you find yourself needing to look at the president’s ears to tell if it’s Bush or Reagan.
- KineticLensman 6y ago> I doubt you find yourself needing to look at the president’s ears to tell if it’s Bush or Reagan Indeed! But I was really just listing the discriminators for the benefit of people who perhaps haven't looked at chimps very hard. For a few of the chimps, I can look and immediately say "that's Bart" or "that's Thelma". This may of course be my mind having internalised a few distinct 'settings' of the discriminators. But the overall effect, coming back to my original point, is that apparently without conscious thought I can recognise specific individual non-humans. The Primate Care Staff, who work with these individuals 24/7, have very good at-a-glance recognition for the entire community.