Introduction
Almost every sensory system is employed by some species of animals for communication with conspecifics. Chemical signals, including pheromones, are ordinarily detected by the olfactory system and are especially important in insects, rodents, cats, and monkeys.
Sounds are extensively used by many groups of invertebrates, as well as by all classes of vertebrate animals. But visual signaling has not been studied as extensively as has acoustical communication, primarily because it is technically more with all kinds of communication behavior in other species, and the distinction is held to be the primary difference in kind that distinguishes human beings from animals (Beach and Stammler 6). Human-animal communication can be defined as a two-way process that includes an exchange of messages and information with the help of language.
In its turn, language can be defined as an expression of man’s very nature and his basic capacity. Animals cannot have language because they lack this capacity. If they had it, they would no longer be animals. They would be human beings (Gardner and Gardner 22). This paper, by looking at the past attempts, will analyze whether human-animal communication can indeed be developed to a point where mere verbal language between the two different species can sustain steady communication.
Main body
The history of human-animal communication goes back to ancient times when the first god and cat were domesticated. The great turning point in prehistory is the point at which men first escaped from the closed cycle of savagery. The first domesticated animal was a dog. This example shows that human thinking has generally been held to be closely linked to language, and some philosophers have argued that the two are inseparable or even identical (Seyfarth and Cheney 145).
To the extent that this assertion is accepted, and insofar as animal communication shares basic properties of human language, the employment of versatile. “Naturally the domestication process, especially when speeded by concerted selective breeding efforts has led to sub-species diversification beyond the wild-domestic dichotomy focused on here” (Beach and Stammler 6).
Further, ancient people domesticated cows and cats, fowls, and horses. This process was based on close relations between humans and animals, and the ability of people to communicate with animals. The possibility that animals have mental experiences is often dismissed as anthropomorphic because it is held to imply that other species have the same mental experiences a man might have under comparable circumstances.
This widespread view itself contains the questionable assumption that human mental experiences are the only kind that can conceivably exist. This belief that mental experiences are a unique attribute of a single species seems more likely than not that mental experiences, like many other characters, are widespread but differ greatly in nature and complexity.
In order to understand animals, humans try to recognize their language and teach them to sign language. The early attempts were made by Gardner and Gardner in 1969. The recent studies of gestural communication between chimpanzees and human experimenters are widely recognized as a major breakthrough in the behavioral sciences. Several earlier attempts to teach chimpanzees to make vocal sounds were significant in their almost total failure.
Even after years of effort, home-reared chimpanzees learned to produce only a very few recognizable monosyllabic words, although they recognized many words of human speech. They trained a wild-born young female chimpanzee, Washoe, to use several dozen “words” from the American Sign Language for the deaf (Gardner and Gardner 25). An important part of their procedure was the total immersion of Washoe in a social environment consisting of human companions who communicated only in this sign language while in her presence.
In four years, Washoe acquired approximately 130 signs, invented a few of her own, and used them all in conversational exchanges with her human companions. In carefully controlled blind experiments, she was able to name pictures presented by an experimenter who could not see them himself. Washoe spontaneously used signs and combined small groups of signs in meaningful ways, transferring them appropriately to new situations. For example, the sign for “open,” which she originally learned for doors, she later used to request the opening of boxes, drawers, briefcases, and picture books.
Among many significant findings, these studies have demonstrated that chimpanzees can communicate with each other by means of a sign language they have been taught by human experimenters. The example of Koko, the lowland gorilla, proves that a human-animal interaction is possible. Koko was able to communicate with people and use more than 1000 signs. As the most important, Koko could also learn to identify objects and pictures by hearing the names in spoken English. She recognized and interpreted more than 2,000 English words. These were names of familiar objects, but the objects were not present during this phase of the training.
After training was completed, Koko showed himself completely capable of using these gestural signs correctly to identify the objects for which they stood. These differences in experimental approaches are less important than the fact that both approaches have yielded similar results: chimpanzees have learned to use surprisingly large vocabularies of gestures or manually manipulated symbols to communicate far more complex messages than scientists had previously believed were possible in any nonhuman animal. This ability allowed scientists to train a chimpanzee to utilize both spoken English and sign language.
The example of Alex, the parrot, proves that birds also recognize spoken words and can communicate with the help of signs. The case of Alex proves that a bird has intelligence and communicates creatively. His language is not a mechanical repetition of sounds and words but a thinking process similar to the human intelligence system (Gardner and Gardner 27).
The main benefit of human-animal communication is that it will help scientists to understand the world of animals and explore it. One consequence of the view that awareness is simply one aspect of neurophysiological processes is to raise the nature nurture question with regard to mental experiences themselves. To the extent that they are dealt with at all by scientists, it seems to be tacitly assumed that mental experiences result solely from individual experience and, in particular, from learning.
Applying the same balanced approach to mental experience leads to a cautiously open mind concerning the possibility that both genetic and environmental influences, and interactions between them, may be important in the causation of mental processes, including awareness (Hotshot Money in Science 2007). Knowing so little about mental experiences in other species, critics can begin to attack the nature-nurture question, despite its potential importance. Human-animal communication opens new opportunities for the use of animal work in the most difficult and dangerous places.
Animal communication has been invaluable in the analysis and explanation of many biological phenomena, including some aspects of behavior, such as learning. The resulting knowledge and understanding have had many important applications to human medicine in particular and human affairs in general. Biologists have often found that particular phenomena are more easily or more effectively investigated in certain species (Human and Animal Systems of Communication n.d.).
It is common knowledge that cures for many human diseases have been discovered by this general procedure, and human welfare has been served in many other areas, such as in the study of nutrition. It is also obvious that this basic approach depends heavily on evolutionary continuity and the resulting confidence that the same basic principles can be applied to an animal and human physiology. Social communication behavior, broadly defined, is clearly of the highest importance in human affairs, comparable in importance to nutrition and physical health.
But, unfortunately, we do not understand it nearly so well as many other areas of biology. This, in turn, suggests that experimental analyses of social-communication behavior making use of animal surrogates could contribute significantly to a better understanding of human psychology, sociology, and even such apparently nonbiological disciplines as economics and philosophy (Human and Animal Systems of Communication n.d.).
Of course, such comparative analyses can never do the whole job, and any resulting conclusions must be checked against data obtained by studying human beings–just as new drugs or biochemical processes developed by animal experiments need careful checking with human subjects before their general application is wise. But many advances in the biomedical sciences would have been greatly impeded, if not hopelessly crippled, without the use of animal surrogates for basic research (Seyfarth and Cheney 145).
The main drawbacks of studies are inadequate design and lack of information and substantial results. One challenging approach would be direct “impersonation” of a similar species, such as a chimpanzee, by an adequately disguised experimenter using the gestures and sounds characteristic of chimpanzee communication (Seyfarth and Cheney 145). The disguise would have to be thorough, including not only visual appearance but also chimpanzee sounds and appropriate pheromonal perfumes.
This whole approach to the study of communication behavior in animals is poorly developed, and even at the level of preliminary hypotheses, that it is difficult to anticipate where it might lead. Perhaps the outcome of numerous and laborious experiments would be a negative result, in that no additional kinds or degrees of communication would be discovered (Human and Animal Systems of Communication n.d.). Even such results would be of value in setting more precisely defined limits to the communicative capabilities of the species in question.
Alternately, however, it might be discovered that previously unsuspected messages are exchanged, and the scientific interest in such discoveries is self-evident. If we consider the recent history of this field, it is clear that far more complex communication behavior has been found than any scientist would have ventured to predict 30 years ago. The questions of morality involve research design questions and violation of animal rights. These deep-seated objections deserve careful attention, for it is surely no accident that they are so widely and strongly felt.
The strict behaviorist believes that it is operationally meaningless, and hence foolishly unscientific, to consider even human mental experiences. Thus, if researchers follow morals and ethical norms, they will be unable to investigate animal language and make discoveries in this sphere, It will limit our knowledge about the world and nature around us (Seyfarth and Cheney 145).
Conclusion
In sum, the facts mention above prove that human-animal communication takes place and humans have the possibility to investigate and understand the world of animals and their thoughts. Others appear simply to prefer statements of faith that man is radically different in kind from all other animals and, furthermore, is intrinsically superior, not only mentally but in fundamental moral values. To accept into the covert fold verbal, but not nonverbal, communication would scarcely be parsimonious.
One objection that can be anticipated is the assumption that animals always express their motivational states immediately, whereas men can inhibit the expression and yet retain the internal communication behavior. But this seems highly unlikely as a general rule, for in many cases animals clearly retain the memory of some relationship about which they communicate only when circumstances are appropriate.
Works Cited
Animals have Language of their Own. Southeast Outdoors. 2005.
Beach, H., Stammler, F. Human-Animal Relations in Pastoralism; Nomadic Peoples, 10 (2006), 6.
Gardner, R. A., Gardner, B. T. Teaching sign language to chimpanzees. New York: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Hotshot Money in Science. 2007. Web.
Human and Animal Systems of Communication. n.d. Web.
Seyfarth, R. M., Cheney, D. L. Signalers and Receivers in Animal Communication. Annual Review of Psychology (2003), 145.