Do animals have language? - Michele Bishop

All animals communicate. But do they have language? Michele Bishop details the four specific qualities we associate with language and investigates whether or not certain animals utilize some or all of those qualities to communicate.

Lesson by Michele Bishop, animation by Avi Ofer.

[mikyathomas]

The art style of the video reminds me of Roald Dahl's books.

[pablix_]

I knew that crabs were shellfish but not selfish.

[baconofthedarkside]

but what if an alien looks at our language and says it is not a language because it is missing one of the features of their language?

[l.j.]

Of course they have language! The dogs in my neighborhood be having a whole conversation with each other 😂

[bananian]

Bees talk about food.
Prairie Dogs talk about predators.
Humans meme.

[bluepearl_]

Imagine the only way human beings could communicate with each other was through dance. Life would immediately become 100 times more hilarious.

[VideoDanielful]

Damn self-centered crabs only talking about themselves.

[dave]

I used to have a parrot that would talk nice to lure me to his cage and then he'd charge at me when I got close. He knew what he was doing.

[BlazeBluetm]

"after all, we are all animals" thank you, now i can show this to anyone who says "er no, we are humans not animals".

[metro_mutt]

Hello chicken owner here, they have their own unique language where certain noises mean different things and they have a wide variety of them. My one girl does velociraptor noises(not sure what that one means yet) I have never heard any other chickens make a sound exactly like it, she often commonly purrs and has different forms of chatters or complaints. The calls for alarm sound alike but are slightly different; for instance if its a false alarm and she wants attention, just laid a egg, saw a aerial predator, or a terrestrial predator!

When a chicken hears a egg song all the others will yell with that one chicken too in what I like to call a "Sympathy pain call" even roosters will do it. I believe its more to let them know they are there but its something that i still find interesting

[Mxlsptlk]

The radio show I heard about Prairie Dogs mentioned that, in tests, they could invent new words to describe something they had never seen before. That is rarely seen in animals. They lack displacement, but their current location and the current time are the most important things to them.

[AustinTexasthStreet]

My cat definitely talks some serious shit when he gets hungry or agitated!! The human standard is Not the Only way to measure things!! Even with our language, only around 7% of what we say is actually conveyed in the words we use. The majority of our communications are in things like tone and non-verbal clues... Even though my cat just meows and things like that, I can genuinely understand several different things he "says" based on context clues, tone, body language etc!! I can usually tell what he is communicating!! And he 100% definitely uses more verbal sounds (meows etc) than he would in Nature because he totally does understand that WE communicate verbally and he understands that's how he needs to try to communicate with me!! He does the best he can with the limitations he has but he understands how to convey what he wants from me!! They are so smart it's crazy....

[derpygrenade]

What If animals tried to talk to us, but they gave up thinking we're too stupid...

[Merto]

So what is the next step in language development? What would a superior alien's language have that we don't?

[levihowell]

It seems to me that we've created such strict stipulations for language so that no other creatures communications will fill all points and we remain unique. It seems to me language among non human animals would be any type of symbolic communication. If that's our definition then it seems language occurs in any animal that exists in a community. The more intelligent the animal the more complex the language

[arielgaray]

Anyone else laughed when the chickens were talking and what they were talking about? 😂😂

[Sage]

I lived with a variety of animals in my life. I have no doubt: all of them communicate and some of them have language. We just don't understand. If you pay attention to tour cat or dog, you will notice the variations on the sounds, like phonemes. The reasons behind the "limited communication" of many observed animals is likely due to natural conditions (very hash). If I put YOU in a jungle situation from chieldhood let's see how your vocabulary would be...

[raycao]

Thanks TED ED . Apart from the great knowledge . Can we please appreciate how great funny the animation is . Not only in this episode but also in all others .

[lawrencestone]

So Is math a language? I feel like it follows all 4 of those criteria.

[popalupa]

I think there's another feature of language that you forgot: double articulation — using meaningless sounds to create meaningful words.