Animal Communication
Animal communication refers to the transmission of information between animals using signals such as sounds, visual displays, or chemical cues. This communication serves various purposes, including mating, warning of danger, and establishing social hierarchies. It plays a crucial role in the survival and reproduction of individuals and the maintenance of social structures within animal populations.
6 Key excerpts on "Animal Communication"
- Brent D. Ruben, Brent D. Ruben(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...2 Zoology Hubert Frings Definitions and Problems AN exact definition of Animal Communication is not possible—indeed, may never be possible.(7 ; 12, pp. 5-18 ; 26) It is generally agreed, however, that an operant definition can be formulated. Communication between two animals is said to occur when one animal produces a chemical or physical change in the environment (signal) that influences the behavior of another. The study of Animal Communication has received no generally accepted single name, being engaged in by students in many fields: sensory and nervous physiology, ecology, animal behavior (ethology), and comparative psychology. Sebeok(24 ; 26) has suggested the term zoosemiotics for this field of research, but it is still too early to see whether this will be adopted generally. While some students of animal behavior would restrict communication to intraspecific relationships only, others would include any case in which the behavior of one animal influences that of another, thus including warning colors, and the like. An interesting case in point is that of echolocation: the ability of some animals—for example, bats and porpoises—to locate unseen objects by reflected pulsed sounds. Some consider this a form of autocommunication; others consider it not communication at all. We shall not discuss echolocation here, not because it is unworthy of discussion or should necessarily be excluded from communication, but for the much more prosaic reason that there are enough other matters to occupy us. Up to now, studies on Animal Communication have not in themselves led to generalizations that aid our understanding of human communication. When comparisons between human and Animal Communication have been made, they have invariably been by someone trying to decide whether animals actually have languages, and the criteria used have been those proposed by students of human language (cf., for instance, Hockett in Ref. 14 and Count in Ref. 26)...
eBook - ePubAnimal Learning and Cognition
An Introduction
- John M. Pearce(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...Animal Communication and language DOI: 10.4324/9781315782911-13 Animal Communication Communication and Language Can an Ape Create a Sentence? Language Training with Other Species The Requirements for Learning a Language Defining precisely what is meant by Animal Communication is a surprisingly difficult task that can readily lead to controversy. For present purposes, however, a useful definition is that communication occurs when one organism transmits a signal that another organism is capable of responding to appropriately. By interpreting this statement loosely, a wide range of species can be said to communicate. One of the simplest creatures, the protozoan, can influence the movement of others by secreting a chemical; during courtship, the male fruit-fly stimulates the female by producing a sound with its wings; and the chimpanzee uses a range of sounds, facial expressions, and smell to influence the behavior of other members of its social group. The fact that animals are able to communicate with each other raises a variety of related questions. What sort of information do they communicate? How does the ability to communicate develop? Does one animal communicate with the intention of influencing another’s behavior, or is the act of communication little more than a response to a certain stimulus? The purpose of the first part of this chapter is to address these questions by focusing on selected examples of communication by different species. Other questions that are inevitably raised in discussions of Animal Communication concern their ability to use language. For example, to what extent does Animal Communication resemble language, and can animals be taught a language? The most important intellectual capacity possessed by humans is language. By use of the spoken word we are able to live together in large and more or less harmonious social groups; we can teach our children an enormous range of skills; and we can also express our feelings and our thoughts...
eBook - ePub- Nicky Hayes(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...Communication and information 5 T he ability to receive information and to transmit it to the outside world also provides animals with the mechanisms of communication. But what is communication? Defining what we mean by communication isn't very easy, not only because communication can take so many forms, but also because it may be entirely unintentional on the part of the communicator. If a bird sings to advertise its ownership of territory to other potential rivals, but also incidentally informs a prowling cat of its whereabouts, has it communicated with the cat? The simplest definition of communication, that it involves information passing from one animal to another, would imply that it has. Some researchers, however, take a different view. Slater (1983) argued that an essential feature of communication is that the receiver should benefit from it, at least on average. In evolutionary terms, Slater argued, communication has evolved because it contributes somehow to the animal's inclusive fitness. That doesn't mean that it always benefits the animal—as just described, there may be occasions where it is disadvantageous to a particular individual on a particular occasion. But on average, it will be more of an evolutionary advantage to the animal than not communicating would be. Another view of communication focuses on the effect that the communication has on the recipient. Krebs and Davies (1978) argued that the reason why communication benefits the animal that is sending the information is because it allows that animal to influence, or manipulate, the behaviour of the animal that receives it. This manipulation of others confers an evolutionary advantage on the sender. The bird sings because the behaviour of its potential rivals is different as a result of its singing. Marler (1984) argued that communication is a much more interactive process than either of these two models suggest...
eBook - ePubAnimal Minds
Beyond Cognition to Consciousness
- Donald R. Griffin(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
...CHAPTER NINE Communication as Evidence of Thinking It is much more effective for one animal to anticipate another’s actions than to wait until they are under way. This is especially obvious in the case of aggressive encounters. When a dominant animal signals its intention to attack, it is much better for a subordinate to perceive this as a threat than to wait until it is actually injured. For threats can be dealt with in several ways, including retreat, counterthreats that may deter the attack, or submissive behavior. Insofar as animals ever experience conscious thoughts and feelings, these are very likely to accompany social behavior and interactions between predators and prey. Many if not most interactions between animals may well involve at least simple feelings and thoughts about the situation. If so, other animals with which signals are exchanged will benefit by correctly understanding what the communicator feels or wants, as emphasized by Krebs and Dawkins (1984). Communication is often a two-way process, a repeated exchange of signals by which two or more animals can evaluate each other’s feelings and thoughts as well as their likelihood of behaving in various ways. Animal Communication can therefore provide a useful and significant “window” on animal minds, that is, a source of objective evidence about the thoughts and feelings that have previously seemed so inaccessible to scientific investigation. Experimental playbacks of communicative signals are of crucial importance because they allow a limited but revealing sort of participatory dialog between animal and scientist. Sounds are the most easily simulated signals, but other sensory channels can also be employed in playback experiments, provided only that technical means are available to reproduce the animal signal with adequate fidelity...
eBook - ePubQuestions About Language
What Everyone Should Know About Language in the 21st Century
- Laurie Bauer, Andreea S. Calude, Laurie Bauer, Andreea S. Calude(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Importantly, most of these convey essentially the same rather simple message: advertising the availability of the individual for mating. This is of course by no means the only message an animal can communicate, but it is typical in its directness and its relation to the immediate context in which the signal is presented. Apart from visual displays, there are a number of other channels through which animals inform one another. Chemicals including pheromones and other olfactory signals (in ants, bees, moths, mice, lemurs and many others), ultrasound (in bats, dolphins and the courtship songs of mice, among others), infrasound (in elephants) and the production and perception of characteristic electric fields (in certain fish) all provide efficient signalling channels under ecologically appropriate conditions. Of course, many non-human species communicate in sound as humans do. This includes frogs, birds (who produce a variety of calls, in addition to the specialized class of vocalizations represented by true song in most of the nearly 4,000 species belonging to the order Passeriformes), as well as virtually all mammals to at least some extent. Birdsong is a particularly interesting and complex form of vocal signalling, of which more will be said below. However, despite a number of distinctive characteristics, the songs of birds are in the end no different in their essential character from other animal signals. The song is an assertion of the bird’s possession of a territory, for the purpose of defending it against competitors and attracting potential mates. No matter how internally complex, that complexity is never linked to a more complex message. Compared with the lexicon of a human language, the inventories of available signals in animal systems are several orders of magnitude smaller. Abstracting away from varying degrees of the intensity with which a communicative display is produced, the characteristic repertoire of any given species is quite limited...
eBook - ePubHandbook of Mammalian Vocalization
An Integrative Neuroscience Approach
- Stefan M Brudzynski, Stefan M Brudzynski(Authors)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
...SECTION 1 Introduction CHAPTER 1.1 Vocalization as an ethotransmitter: introduction to the Handbook of Mammalian Vocalization Stefan M. Brudzynski Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada I. Introduction Animal vocal communication has received much attention from researchers for many decades. Over the last 70 years, attention has been focused on different aspects of the process of sending and receiving signals. Some approaches were centered on the mechanisms of emitting vocalizations, regardless of the recipient, and others represented a unidirectional process of producing and sending vocal signals by the signaler to the receiver. Adequate responses by the receiver were evidence of the communicatory process. Also, significant research attention has been focused on receivers with regard to the behavioral consequences of perceived species-specific vocal signals. Finally, vocal communication was also approached as an exchange of vocalizations between or among animals in a process of bi- or multidirectional communication, where the main biological function was centered not on sending or receiving specific information, but on testing the responsiveness of the receiver or influencing the receiver’s behavior. In larger social groups, this type of communication could be seen as a social negotiation or social decision-making process. The fundamental and common element of all of these different approaches is vocalization as a biological phenomenon, and this is the main subject of this handbook. I.A. Mammalian vocalization as a particularly well-developed communication system Despite numerous modes of mammalian communication, the production of vocalizations in mammals remains one of the most widespread behavioral and physiological processes, requiring highly complex coordination and integration of numerous subsystems, including the central nervous system, autonomic and endocrine systems, and peripheral organs...
