8 ms·

Researcher decodes prairie dog language

196 points by alecdibble 13y ago

raverbashing 13y ago
Yes, last time I saw one (in a video), it kept going about trying to find someone called Helen!
- bennyg 13y ago
  If I think I know what you're talking about, the person in question is Alan.
  - phy6 13y ago
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=f-Kt_kuYVtU#t=22s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
  - PeterWhittaker 13y ago
    I thought it was Steve.
Falling3 13y ago
I've always found this very interesting, especially their seemingly built-in vocabulary. It's definitely not news though as the blog suggests. I remember having heard about this for years. Here's a reference from 2005: http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2005/prairie_dog.html http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2005/prairi....
- Nagyman 13y ago
  Not quite as old, but this radiolab podcast talks of the language too http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2010/oct/18/wild-talk/ http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2010/oct/18/wild...
- alecdibble 13y ago
  I really didn't expect to read a conclusion like this in an article about prairie dog linguistic research: This article has summarized groundbreaking research that reveals sophisticated language use by the prairie dog. Their ability to coin new words has thus far defied reasonable explanation. To us it indicates that a divine Creator was required to endow these rodents with this language gift. Surely, even a higher level of design and intelligence would be required to enable the incredibly more complex linguistic abilities of mankind as spiritual children of the Living God.
  - Falling3 13y ago
    Oh wow. I didn't actually read it all the way through. That was kind of... jarring.
  - lolcraft 13y ago
    Well, to be fair, there's a fair amount of goofy Biblical quoting at the beginning. Really, that article is hilarious, you should read it. Complete with pseudo-information theory bullshit -- it's INCREDIBLY COMPLEX, says the title of one section--, artificial intelligence from the sixties (I guess if SHRDLU couldn't do it, then GOD must have done it), and just general obtuseness from a pair of pompous fundamentalists. Come on, the conclusion of this religious tract disguised as scientific paper is, literally, "we don't know why this happens, so GODDIDIT"! Got to laugh at that :) Were the authors catholics, they'd be either hypothesizing the existence of a Prairie Dog Jesus, or contemplating whether to send missionaries. I can't decide on what would be funnier.
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      Were the authors Roman Catholic, they would not be citing this or anything else as evidence for intelligent design.
      - Terretta 13y ago
        Book of Mormon mention suggests not Catholic. :-)
- ascotan 13y ago
  I also remember reading an old article from around 2000 about prairie dog language. It wasn't as hokey as the article linked above though. I remember something about researchers realizing the dogs had a vocabulary when they would bark differently based on wether a person or a bird of prey was near.
jcoder 13y ago
Off-topic, but if you manage a content site, and you cannot say with a straight face that your mobile site is objectively better for mobile devices in some way, GET RID OF THE MOBILE SITE.
- RBerenguel 13y ago
  As an iPad 1 user, agree. Most mobile sites kill Safari on iPad 1s
jerryhuang100 13y ago
I knew Timon could talk! (OK, I know meerkat and prairie dogs are in different orders.) By the way, similar vocal studies have been done with zebra finch: http://ofer.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/ http://ofer.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/
n0mad01 13y ago
funny, a friend of mine has been just a few days ago to the vienna zoo and told me she spent 40 mins in front of the prairie dogs claiming they're talking to humans and also posing for photos and laughing at some people. i didn't know what to say, so i just laughed, now i have to tell her that link ...
ksikka 13y ago
I wonder if they ever do things like... "Who's on first! Who? Yes!"
3rd3 13y ago
It would be super fun to have a real-time translator and then approach them wearing costumes.
- szopa 13y ago
  A prairie dog shaped robot could work better.
- charonn0 13y ago
  Cyrano de Bergerac for furries?
wavefunction 13y ago
The more we learn about animals, the more I wonder about our casual treatment of them. It's led me to the conclusion that there are certainly species at least on our level of cognitive development, they just might have different value systems such that our pursuit of technology seems very foreign and strange. It's also why I'm transitioning into vegetarianism (though still eating chicken eggs, which I can't find an ethical issue with).
- stephengillie 13y ago
  >they just might have different value systems such that our pursuit of technology seems very foreign and strange. I believe the value systems which govern our diets also seem very foreign and strange to the other species with whom we share Earth.
- nkoren 13y ago
  I became vegetarian many years ago for precisely this reason. Ordinarily I don't get preachy about it, and tell people that it's just an individual choice of mine. But in truth, the concept of eating meat really does bother me, and I think it bothers a lot of other people. Other carnivorous animals are rarely aware of the fact that they are using other sentient beings for food (although sometimes they do demonstrate an awareness of this), but we can't help but be aware of it. We justify it with a values system which says that it is morally permissible to eat creatures that aren't as smart or are otherwise just different from us. But that's a tenuous sort of morality, and I honestly think that it gnaws at us more than we usually admit. Think about how aliens are typically portrayed in science fiction films. They've crossed unimaginable light-years to come to earth, and are immensely smarter than us. But nine times out of ten, once they get here, they've got nothing better to do than kill and more often than not eat us. Same goes for superior machine consciousness: in our mythologies, it almost always wants to kill and/or consume us. Why? I think it's a reflection of our own insecurities: if there's any species out there that's truly smarter than us, we'd better hope that it doesn't share our value system -- because if it does, then it will see us as entirely legitimate to farm and eat. So I choose to do unto other species as I'd like other species to do unto me. But of course that's just my personal choice.
ilamont 13y ago
Some years ago, I read about chickadees (small birds found in parts of the U.S. and Canada) having a similar alarm system (1) -- certain types of calls for certain types of predators (e.g., hawks, cats, or owls) and additional modifications based on the perceived threat (including lengthening the call for more dangerous animals). One of the most interesting aspects of these calls is the "mobbing" signal, which is used to call other chickadees and even other bird species. The birds are quite endearing; they have a small black cap on a white head and two easily recognizable calls -- the "chicka-dee-dee-dee" alarm call and a sad-sounding, two- or three-note call (2). If you live in the northeast U.S. and set up a bird feeder during the winter, you'll probably get them to visit. 1) http://www.washington.edu/news/2005/06/23/chickadees-alarm-calls-carry-information-about-size-threat-of-predator/ http://www.washington.edu/news/2005/06/23/chickadees-alarm-c... 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l41nXK4ZdUA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l41nXK4ZdUA
LowKarmaAccount 13y ago
Animals do not have language in the same way that humans do. Yes, the may have a way to communicate with each other by sounding their voices in different pitches, and yes, some apes can learn sign language, but that does not mean that they understand language in the way humans do. Human language has grammar, syntax, and recursion in a way that animals do not.
- gizmo686 13y ago
  Do we have evidence of that? At the moment it seems like we are still very early in the process of understanding non-human language.
- anonymous 13y ago
  To be fair, some humans have trouble grasping recursion. I can't speculate as to how or why, since I've always failed to grasp their fail to grasp.
- zecho 13y ago
  Watch the video in the post. The prairie dogs appear to have a basic syntax and grammar ( [threat] [shape] [color] ), according to the researchers.
  - wildwood 13y ago
    That sounds like it could be generalized to [noun] [adjective] [adjective]. Notice the lack of verbs, prepositions, or markers for subordinate clauses. This seems much closer to a code than an actual language.
coin 13y ago
F'in onswipe on an iPad, time to change the use agent
js2 13y ago
Non-swipe: http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/researcher-decodes-praire-dog-language-discovers-theyve-been-calling-people-fat.html?onswipe_redirect=never http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/researcher-decode...
charlieflowers 13y ago
What a beautiful, inspiring surprise, that prairie dogs would have such a powerful language. Just showed it to some kids, who were as fascinated as I was and peppered me with a million questions. Science is awesome.
jryce 13y ago
It would be very funny to watch older documentaries about prairie dogs and see what they were saying about the crew members filming them.
cLeEOGPw 13y ago
What if human ancestors were like these back in dinosaur era.
solomatov 13y ago
Incredible. I owe several degu which are very similar to praire dogs (both rodents, both are highly social, both live in prairies etc). They produce a large number of sounds, and I always thought that their sounds are just are a bunch of noise. Now, I understand, after heard prairie dog's sound that it's not so simple.
mhartl 13y ago
Does this use an academic meaning of the term "language" I don't know about? It sounds like prairie dogs effectively have words, but there's no indication that they use grammar, syntax, etc., so describing their vocalizations as "language" seems misleading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_communication

196 points by alecdibble 13y ago

raverbashing 13y ago

Yes, last time I saw one (in a video), it kept going about trying to find someone called Helen!

bennyg 13y ago
If I think I know what you're talking about, the person in question is Alan.
- phy6 13y ago
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=f-Kt_kuYVtU#t=22s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
- PeterWhittaker 13y ago
  I thought it was Steve.

Falling3 13y ago

I've always found this very interesting, especially their seemingly built-in vocabulary. It's definitely not news though as the blog suggests. I remember having heard about this for years. Here's a reference from 2005: http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2005/prairie_dog.html http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2005/prairi....

Nagyman 13y ago
Not quite as old, but this radiolab podcast talks of the language too http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2010/oct/18/wild-talk/ http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2010/oct/18/wild...
alecdibble 13y ago
I really didn't expect to read a conclusion like this in an article about prairie dog linguistic research: This article has summarized groundbreaking research that reveals sophisticated language use by the prairie dog. Their ability to coin new words has thus far defied reasonable explanation. To us it indicates that a divine Creator was required to endow these rodents with this language gift. Surely, even a higher level of design and intelligence would be required to enable the incredibly more complex linguistic abilities of mankind as spiritual children of the Living God.
- Falling3 13y ago
  Oh wow. I didn't actually read it all the way through. That was kind of... jarring.
- lolcraft 13y ago
  Well, to be fair, there's a fair amount of goofy Biblical quoting at the beginning. Really, that article is hilarious, you should read it. Complete with pseudo-information theory bullshit -- it's INCREDIBLY COMPLEX, says the title of one section--, artificial intelligence from the sixties (I guess if SHRDLU couldn't do it, then GOD must have done it), and just general obtuseness from a pair of pompous fundamentalists. Come on, the conclusion of this religious tract disguised as scientific paper is, literally, "we don't know why this happens, so GODDIDIT"! Got to laugh at that :) Were the authors catholics, they'd be either hypothesizing the existence of a Prairie Dog Jesus, or contemplating whether to send missionaries. I can't decide on what would be funnier.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    Were the authors Roman Catholic, they would not be citing this or anything else as evidence for intelligent design.
    - Terretta 13y ago
      Book of Mormon mention suggests not Catholic. :-)
ascotan 13y ago
I also remember reading an old article from around 2000 about prairie dog language. It wasn't as hokey as the article linked above though. I remember something about researchers realizing the dogs had a vocabulary when they would bark differently based on wether a person or a bird of prey was near.

jcoder 13y ago

Off-topic, but if you manage a content site, and you cannot say with a straight face that your mobile site is objectively better for mobile devices in some way, GET RID OF THE MOBILE SITE.

RBerenguel 13y ago
As an iPad 1 user, agree. Most mobile sites kill Safari on iPad 1s

jerryhuang100 13y ago

I knew Timon could talk! (OK, I know meerkat and prairie dogs are in different orders.) By the way, similar vocal studies have been done with zebra finch: http://ofer.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/ http://ofer.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/

n0mad01 13y ago

funny, a friend of mine has been just a few days ago to the vienna zoo and told me she spent 40 mins in front of the prairie dogs claiming they're talking to humans and also posing for photos and laughing at some people. i didn't know what to say, so i just laughed, now i have to tell her that link ...

ksikka 13y ago

I wonder if they ever do things like... "Who's on first! Who? Yes!"

3rd3 13y ago

It would be super fun to have a real-time translator and then approach them wearing costumes.

szopa 13y ago
A prairie dog shaped robot could work better.
charonn0 13y ago
Cyrano de Bergerac for furries?

wavefunction 13y ago

The more we learn about animals, the more I wonder about our casual treatment of them. It's led me to the conclusion that there are certainly species at least on our level of cognitive development, they just might have different value systems such that our pursuit of technology seems very foreign and strange. It's also why I'm transitioning into vegetarianism (though still eating chicken eggs, which I can't find an ethical issue with).

stephengillie 13y ago
>they just might have different value systems such that our pursuit of technology seems very foreign and strange. I believe the value systems which govern our diets also seem very foreign and strange to the other species with whom we share Earth.
nkoren 13y ago
I became vegetarian many years ago for precisely this reason. Ordinarily I don't get preachy about it, and tell people that it's just an individual choice of mine. But in truth, the concept of eating meat really does bother me, and I think it bothers a lot of other people. Other carnivorous animals are rarely aware of the fact that they are using other sentient beings for food (although sometimes they do demonstrate an awareness of this), but we can't help but be aware of it. We justify it with a values system which says that it is morally permissible to eat creatures that aren't as smart or are otherwise just different from us. But that's a tenuous sort of morality, and I honestly think that it gnaws at us more than we usually admit. Think about how aliens are typically portrayed in science fiction films. They've crossed unimaginable light-years to come to earth, and are immensely smarter than us. But nine times out of ten, once they get here, they've got nothing better to do than kill and more often than not eat us. Same goes for superior machine consciousness: in our mythologies, it almost always wants to kill and/or consume us. Why? I think it's a reflection of our own insecurities: if there's any species out there that's truly smarter than us, we'd better hope that it doesn't share our value system -- because if it does, then it will see us as entirely legitimate to farm and eat. So I choose to do unto other species as I'd like other species to do unto me. But of course that's just my personal choice.

ilamont 13y ago

Some years ago, I read about chickadees (small birds found in parts of the U.S. and Canada) having a similar alarm system (1) -- certain types of calls for certain types of predators (e.g., hawks, cats, or owls) and additional modifications based on the perceived threat (including lengthening the call for more dangerous animals). One of the most interesting aspects of these calls is the "mobbing" signal, which is used to call other chickadees and even other bird species. The birds are quite endearing; they have a small black cap on a white head and two easily recognizable calls -- the "chicka-dee-dee-dee" alarm call and a sad-sounding, two- or three-note call (2). If you live in the northeast U.S. and set up a bird feeder during the winter, you'll probably get them to visit. 1) http://www.washington.edu/news/2005/06/23/chickadees-alarm-calls-carry-information-about-size-threat-of-predator/ http://www.washington.edu/news/2005/06/23/chickadees-alarm-c... 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l41nXK4ZdUA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l41nXK4ZdUA

LowKarmaAccount 13y ago

Animals do not have language in the same way that humans do. Yes, the may have a way to communicate with each other by sounding their voices in different pitches, and yes, some apes can learn sign language, but that does not mean that they understand language in the way humans do. Human language has grammar, syntax, and recursion in a way that animals do not.

gizmo686 13y ago
Do we have evidence of that? At the moment it seems like we are still very early in the process of understanding non-human language.
anonymous 13y ago
To be fair, some humans have trouble grasping recursion. I can't speculate as to how or why, since I've always failed to grasp their fail to grasp.
zecho 13y ago
Watch the video in the post. The prairie dogs appear to have a basic syntax and grammar ( [threat] [shape] [color] ), according to the researchers.
- wildwood 13y ago
  That sounds like it could be generalized to [noun] [adjective] [adjective]. Notice the lack of verbs, prepositions, or markers for subordinate clauses. This seems much closer to a code than an actual language.

coin 13y ago

F'in onswipe on an iPad, time to change the use agent

js2 13y ago

Non-swipe: http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/researcher-decodes-praire-dog-language-discovers-theyve-been-calling-people-fat.html?onswipe_redirect=never http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/researcher-decode...

charlieflowers 13y ago

What a beautiful, inspiring surprise, that prairie dogs would have such a powerful language. Just showed it to some kids, who were as fascinated as I was and peppered me with a million questions. Science is awesome.

jryce 13y ago

It would be very funny to watch older documentaries about prairie dogs and see what they were saying about the crew members filming them.

cLeEOGPw 13y ago

What if human ancestors were like these back in dinosaur era.

solomatov 13y ago

Incredible. I owe several degu which are very similar to praire dogs (both rodents, both are highly social, both live in prairies etc). They produce a large number of sounds, and I always thought that their sounds are just are a bunch of noise. Now, I understand, after heard prairie dog's sound that it's not so simple.

mhartl 13y ago

Does this use an academic meaning of the term "language" I don't know about? It sounds like prairie dogs effectively have words, but there's no indication that they use grammar, syntax, etc., so describing their vocalizations as "language" seems misleading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_communication