5 ms·

I bet pet owners can guess pet gestures as well. On the other hand human gestures don’t always translate from one culture to another; what does that mean?

• simonh 4y ago
  It means that our range of linguistic expression is several orders of magnitude greater and more complex than that of apes. Still when we don’t share a spoken language we fall back on gestures.
• FartyMcFarter 4y ago
  Lots of dog owners are bad at reading their dog's body language. For example, if your dog licks their lips, they're usually trying to calm down the situation (e.g. telling you to stop annoying them), but lots of people don't know this. There are other calming signals, such as the dog closing and opening their eyes (slower than blinking). You can use this on your dog and they might understand it :)
  • krageon 4y ago
    Lots of dog owners are bad at it, but they can probably hit the right thing 50% of the time. Without any sort of successful communication, I can't imagine it would be pleasant to own a pet.
• int_19h 4y ago
  Pets adapt to humans, as well, so it's not a clean comparison. In my experience with cats, for example, the ones who were regularly "spoken" to (by responding to their meeps) tend to develop a richer gamut of vocalizations which they use to be more specific about what they want. But it's not really "cat language" - it's language that cats develop specifically for humans.