Animal Cognition and Communication
As usual, read this blog, do the reading, and then take the quiz on Learn to test your understanding.
This week’s reading, Fitch (2019), provides a brief survey of the experimental evidence on the conceptual and communication systems of non-human animals. In particular, Fitch discusses the mismatch between the relatively rich mental lives of non-human animals, and the comparatively impoverished nature of their communication systems: they have mental concepts that they cannot communicate.
Fitch provides a brief summary of concepts in non-human animals. The general conclusion is that nonhuman animals demonstrate an impressive array of complex cognitive abilities, which aren;t reflected in their communication systems. This has two important implications. First, much of this sophisticated cognition is possible in the absence of language, and presumably preexisted the emergence of the ability to externalise these rich mental lives in humans. Second, many capabilities which were previously thought to be uniquely human have been found in nonhuman animals; Fitch focuses on concepts, but the same is true of sophisticated behaviours like tool use. The clip below shows a chimpanzee using stone tools to crack open nuts, demonstrating fine motor control and planning:
These impressive abilities are not only found in species which are closely related to humans. The second clip shows problem solving by a crow: crows are able to use their impressive capacities for memory, planning, innovation and reasoning to complete the task of retrieving an item of food.
In contrast to the rich internal cognitive world of animals, Fitch argues that their communication systems are relatively impoverished when compared with the apparent richness of their mental lives, and very clearly when compared to human language. Animal communication systems do however show a great degree of variety in their richness and complexity. For instance, the bengalese finch is capable of producing song with relatively elaborate structures, but which is restricted in its function and lacks propositional content:
Various non-human animals are also flexible vocal learners, and we will return to vocal learning later in the course. One of the most entertaining examples is the Lyrebird, which is hilariously brilliant at mimicking the sounds in their environment:
Animal communication systems also involve conveying information. Vervet monkeys use three distinct alarm calls to refer to different predators (see video below). In fact alarm calling systems that work like this are fairly common in the natural world - vervets were the first species for which this was conclusively demonstrated (using an ingenious playback method, where experimenters played them recordings of alarm calls in the absence of predators and watched how they responded), which is why everyone uses them as an example, but they are by no means unique (for instance, chickens have an aerial vs terrestrial predator alarm calling system).
We also find impressive communicative abilities in some rather surprising organisms. Fitch talks about the waggle dance of the honeybee and its ability to convey information about something not currently present (aka displacement, one of Hockett’s design features of language:
Kanzi, a bonobo (one of two extant species of chimpanzee, the other being the better-known common chimpanzee) raised in captivity, has mastered a large number of arbitrary symbols and can match these symbols with real-world referents:
Kanzi’s use of arbitrary symbols is just one of his many abilities that are beyond anything we observe in wild bonobos and highlights how different environments can unmask latent cognitive abilities. Like the dolphin studies Fitch discusses in the paper, Kanzi’s impressive knowledge of vocabulary hints at abilities which are necessary pre-conditions for mastery of language. But language is fundamentally distinct in several aspects.
First, human language is highly expressive: it allows us to convey practically any thought that pops into our heads and converse on a range of topics far far larger anything we’ve witnessed in nonhuman animals. Indeed, animal communication appears to be tailored for very specific needs, such as predator warnings and mating. Second, it’s currently unclear whether any no-human animal intentionally informs other individuals, i.e. tailors their signaling behaviour to the knowledge state of their audience. Third, human language achieves its open-ended expressivity through extensive use of structure (in phonology and syntax), which seems to be under-exploited in animal communication systems. Finally, human languages are learned, and learning seems to play a much more constrained role in animal communication systems. In the lecture I’ll focus on these aspects of animal communication systems, contrasting them with human language.
If you want to read about these ideas at more length, you could check out Chapter 4 of Fitch (2010), which surveys the various cognitive abilities and communication systems on offer in the animal world (available online via DiscoverEd).
Fitch, W. T. (2010). The Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fitch, W. T. (2019). Animal cognition and the evolution of human language: why we cannot focus solely on communication. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375, 20190046.
All aspects of this work are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.