When Will We Learn To Speak Animal Languages? Pt 2

And indeed, there seems to be. Slobodchikoff has discovered the rodents have distinct calls pertaining to different potential predator species, such as coyotes, humans or domestic dogs. Their calls even specify the color, size and shape of the predator; for example, they'll differentiate between an overweight, tall human wearing a blue T-shirt and a thin, short human wearing green. [Video: Prairie Dog Alarm Calls] Remarkably, the prairie dogs even create new alarm calls in response to foreign objects introduced by the researchers, such as a picture of a large black oval. Although the prairie dogs never would have had cause to discuss such an object previously, they all generate an identical alarm call in response to it, suggesting they are describing the oval’s size, shape and color in a standard way. And just like different groups of humans, different species of prairie dogs have distinct dialects. The Gunnison's prairie dogs that Slobodchikoff studies are unlikely to understand the calls of Mexican prairie dogs, Slobodchikoff said. Their communication goes beyond alarm calls. “Prairie dogs also have what I call social chatters, where one prairie dog will produce a string of vocalizations, and another prairie dog across the colony will respond with a different string of vocalizations,” Slobodchikoff told Life’s Little Mysteries. "I can show that there seems to be some syntax in these strings, but since nothing about the behavior of the prairie dogs changes, I can't say anything about the context, and so I have no way of decoding the possible information contained in these [social] chatters." [Rats Are Ticklish, and Other Weird Animal Facts] In his new book, "Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals" (St. Martin's Press), scheduled for release on Nov. 27, Slobodchikoff lays out his and other scientists' latest efforts to learn animal tongues. Dolphin-speak If animals seemingly as simple as rodents have a language replete with nouns, adjectives, syntax and dialects, think what higher-order animals might be saying. Elephants hold funerals for their dead and have been known to orchestrate raids on human villages in retaliation for poaching. Chimps wage wars. Complex animal behaviors like these necessitate complex languages, Bekoff said. "People wonder, 'How do wolves coordinate their hunts?' It's by having really complex communication systems." Consider dolphins. They form strong social bonds, and a recent study found they even display culture, preferring to socialize with other dolphins that use the same simple tools as they do. Dolphins also make a variety of vocalizations, such as clicks and whistles. Those aren't likely to be meaningless. So will people ever learn what they're saying? It turns out scientists have been trying to do so for over half a century. "We know a lot more than we knew a few decades ago, but we're still a long way from two-way communication," said Stan Kuczaj, director of the Marine Mammal Behavior and Cognition Laboratory at the University of Southern Mississippi. Kuczaj said the major stumbling block has been figuring out what the units of dolphin communication are. Monosyllabic sounds and other "phonemes are the building blocks of human languages," Kuczaj told Life’s Little Mysteries. "We don't know what the building blocks of dolphin communication systems are. Are they whistles, clicks? We now know they use touch and posture as well. My guess is we'll learn more about the units by studying the development of communication in dolphin calves. And then the next level is, what do the combinations of the units mean?" Denise Herzing and colleagues at the Wild Dolphin Project have discovered that dolphins seem to address each other with names — vocalizations that the researchers call "signature whistles." These would suggest the whistles are units of communication, but how dolphins' clicks and postures enter in remains to be determined.