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I’ve always felt that every animal probably has its own kind of language. We humans just can’t always hear it or make sense of it. I remember reading about a st
by Caelus9 1y ago
I’ve always felt that every animal probably has its own kind of language. We humans just can’t always hear it or make sense of it.
I remember reading about a study on dolphin sounds that actually won an award. The patterns in how they communicate were surprisingly complex.
These kinds of studies don’t just help us understand animals better. They can also inspire new ideas in other parts of life. Pretty cool stuff.
- suddenlybananas 1y agoWhile pretty much every animal communicates, that's radically different from human language.
- prox 1y agoAnimal communities are surprisingly complex. And while they don’t deal in abstractions much like we do, their ability to make things known is impressive,
- perfmode 1y ago> And while they don’t deal in abstractions much like we do I do believe that such a statement won't stand the test of time.
- nkrisc 1y agoLanguage is communication, but not all communication is language.
- growlNark 1y agoI'm fine with calling it language. We have other ways of feeling special.
- nkrisc 1y agoOk, then we need a new word to differentiate between human language and other animal language, because they are still quite different.
- growlNark 1y agoI think you distinguished them admirably. It tends to be pretty obvious from context which meaning is intended. Hell, we use "design language" even if it's clearly not language; i see little reason why this should be different. And of course the rest of the non-verbal chomsky hierarchy has little relation to how most folks use the word (hell, I bet most coders can't even tell you what a regular language is despite using regular expressions). But, particularly when it comes to stuff like bird song, it shows a lot of features of syntax. I just don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater arguing over what to call it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- guerrilla 1y agoUntil recently we didn't even think women and Africans were that intelligent. Never undestimate people's ability to underestimate others.