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Animals That Speak

Elixir said:
steve_bank said:
An old joke. When walking in grizzly country wear bells so they hear you comming. You can tell if scat is grizzly, look for bells.
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No joke. It also smells like pepper spray.
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My understanding is that mace works damn well as a grizzly repellant, pepper spray not so much. However politicians have outlawed the use of mace. Perhaps those politicians decided that grizzlies need to eat and that maybe the bears occasionally like spicy food.
 
skepticalbip said:
Elixir said:
steve_bank said:
An old joke. When walking in grizzly country wear bells so they hear you comming. You can tell if scat is grizzly, look for bells.
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No joke. It also smells like pepper spray.
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My understanding is that mace works damn well as a grizzly repellant, pepper spray not so much. However politicians have outlawed the use of mace. Perhaps those politicians decided that grizzlies need to eat and that maybe the bears occasionally like spicy food.
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When up in North Idaho I heard it said the best use for a handgun when confronted by a grizzly is to shoot yourself in the head.

Videos of tests for bear s[ray showed them to be generally ineffective. If you are that close you are supposed to drop into a ball, cover your head, and hope for the best.

I always carried a sidearm, mostly for two legged critters.

When I was off by myslf goung around blind cornerss I made noise.
 
steve_bank said:
People are stupid. They feed bears through car windows despite warnings not to. There are probably videos on line.
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Yup. Bear attacks are mostly due to human stupidity. If it were only the stupid ones that were the victims that would be fine.
 
steve_bank said:
When up in North Idaho I heard it said the best use for a handgun when confronted by a grizzly is to shoot yourself in the head. ...
I always carried a sidearm, mostly for two legged critters.
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The line I heard was that if you are going to carry a handgun for bear protection, it's important to file the sight off the barrel before you head out...



... so it won't hurt as much when the bear shoves the gun up your ass.

 
It has been a number of months now since our cats started with human language.

An organization has started to form in the way they operate this linguistic tool:

The new cat, "Thwomp" has started acting as a representative for one or both of the other two.

One cat will walk up to her, there will be an interaction, and then she will use the buttons to make some manner of statement, usually demanding food or asking when the next food happens, because she thinks mostly about food.
 
What do you mean by 'started with human language'.
 
steve_bank said:
What do you mean by 'started with human language'.
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Since they started operating utterances of language which humans readily comprehend, and did so usefully, and under their own volition and choice.
 
Elixir said:
untermensche said:
No dogs talk.

Dogs can bang their paws onto objects.
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I think it was the third dog in that video that reminded me of my neighbor's dog, Happy. I visit Happy everyday. We play for awhile and sometimes Happy rests, while I talk to Miss Lonely Hearts. But around 5:45 Happy comes to me and says something like "wa wa wa wa wa wa, ir ir ir ir wa wa". I look at her and say, "Okay Happy. I know it's almost your dinner time and I will leave shortly so you can beg your mom to feed you." If I don't get up immediately, Happy talks to me some more and again I tell her that I know what she wants and I'll leave soon. When I get up and head for the door, Happy says, "WA wa wa ir ir ir" The English translation is, "When you come back with my mom's dinner, don't forget my treat". So, I reassure her that I will either bring her a treat or a little bit of chicken if that's what we're having for dinner. Miss Lonely Hearts thinks that Happy is being rude for asking me to leave, but Happy not only wants to eat, she knows that I need a break from listening to Miss LH complain.

Happy is a very smart Cockapoo, who knows the names of all of her toys. So, if I ask her to go get Foxy, she knows exactly which one is Foxy. I think Happy is probably smarter than many humans. She understands our language much better than most of us understand her language. And, that's another reason why I think dogs are little gods. Besides, if you spell Dog backwards, it spells God. What more proof do we need! 😉😜
 
Jarhyn said:
steve_bank said:
What do you mean by 'started with human language'.
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Since they started operating utterances of language which humans readily comprehend, and did so usefully, and under their own volition and choice.
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You are drifting into a deep abyss. Volition and choice?

In the early 1900s there was a g horse tat appeared to undeestand human speech from his owner. It caused a theological and theosophical stir in the day.

In front of people the horse seemd to undesrtand artculate speech. It was a sensation. Somebody got the idea of putting an opaquebarrier between the horse and speaker. The horse did not respond to speech.

It turned out the horse leaned to respond to the owners body language and tone of voice. It is part of the fight or flight respnse in humans and other critters. We can read intent of an animal by posture and vocalizations.

Run the experiment. Turn your back and in an even tone of voivr say your dog
Fetch my slippers'.

As I posted both cats and dogs are smart problem solvers. There are feral dogs that learn to use subways and bisees to go to s[ecific places, we documented. As I said, our company cat lerned to associate the sound of frodhe door openig with food.

There is video of Merkats that have a cooperative relationship with a bird species. The birds emit a sound for a predator. In return the Merkats leave food for the birds.

There are monkeys who vocalizations for different predators. There is video of a mankey who when the troop is foraging will utter a false warning. When the others run away he picks up the food others have gathered.

There was a parrot in a hose I was sharing. I would start to whistle while rocking side to side in a rhythm. The parrot woad mimic the whistle and start rocking side on her perch.

Non human communication is common youkave to run a controlled experiment to show animals recognize articulate speech. There are parrots who seem to actually use leaned speech in new ways. Hard to actually prove it is what we call cognition and speech.

I read a dolhins researcher believes in a group dolphins have sounds, names, for individuals.

There is a chimp that was taught sign language and appeared to be able to use words to deal with new situations, and passed it on to others. Planet Of The Apes here we come?



en.wikipedia.org

Washoe (chimpanzee) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Washoe (c. September 1965 – October 30, 2007) was a female common chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to communicate using American Sign Language (ASL) as part of an animal research experiment on animal language acquisition.[1]

Washoe learned approximately 350 signs of ASL,[2] also teaching her adopted son Loulis some signs.[3][4][5] She spent most of her life at Central Washington University.
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en.wikipedia.org

Clever Hans - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Clever Hans (German: der Kluge Hans; fl. 1907) was a horse that was claimed to have performed arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. After a formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reactions of his trainer. He discovered this artifact in the research methodology, wherein the horse was responding directly to involuntary cues in the body language of the human trainer, who was entirely unaware that he was providing such cues.[1] In honour of Pfungst's study, the anomalous artifact has since been referred to as the Clever Hans effect and has continued to be important knowledge in the observer-expectancy effect and later studies in animal cognition. Pfungst was an assistant to German philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf, who incorporated the experience with Hans into his further work on animal psychology and his ideas o

The Clever Hans effect​

After Pfungst had become adept at giving Hans performances himself, and was fully aware of the subtle cues which made them possible, he discovered that he would produce these cues involuntarily regardless of whether he wished to exhibit or suppress them. Recognition of this phenomenon has had a large effect on experimental design and methodology for all experiments whatsoever involving sentient subjects, including humans.

The risk of Clever Hans effects is one reason why comparative psychologists normally test animals in isolated apparatus, without interaction with them. However this creates problems of its own, because many of the most interesting phenomena in animal cognition are only likely to be demonstrated in a social context, and in order to train and demonstrate them, it is necessary to build up a social relationship between trainer and animal. This point of view has been strongly argued by Irene Pepperberg in relation to her studies of parrots (Alex), and by Allen and Beatrix Gardner in their study of the chimpanzee Washoe. If the results of such studies are to gain universal acceptance, it is necessary to find some way of testing the animals' achievements which eliminates the risk of Clever Hans effects. However, simply removing the trainer from the scene may not be an appropriate strategy, because where the social relationship between trainer and subject is strong, the removal of the trainer may produce emotional responses preventing the subject from performing. It is therefore necessary to devise procedures where none of those present knows what the animal's likely response may be.

The Clever Hans Effect has also been observed in drug-sniffing dogs. A study at University of California, Davis revealed that cues can be telegraphed by the handler to the dogs, resulting in false positives.[5]
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Pet owners end up seeing a pet as a human. The pet understands them.




.
 
Way back a chimp was taught sign language. I've seen videos of it. She was bale to apply apply it it new situations indicating a conscious reasoning.

en.wikipedia.org

Washoe (chimpanzee) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Washoe (c. September 1965 – October 30, 2007) was a female common chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to communicate using American Sign Language (ASL) as part of an animal research experiment on animal language acquisition.[1]

Washoe learned approximately 350 signs of ASL,[2] also teaching her adopted son Loulis some signs.[3][4][5] She spent most of her life at Central Washington University.
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While with Washoe, the Gardners and Foutses were careful to communicate only in ASL with Washoe, rather than using vocal communication, on the assumption that this would create a less confusing learning environment for Washoe. This technique was said to resemble that used when teaching human children language.[16]

After the first couple of years of the language project, the Gardners and Roger Fouts discovered that Washoe could pick up ASL gestures without direct instruction, but instead by observing humans around her who were signing amongst themselves. For example, the scientists signed "toothbrush" to each other while they brushed their teeth near her. At the time of observation, Washoe showed no signs of having learned the sign, but on a later occasion she reacted to the sight of a toothbrush by spontaneously producing the correct sign, thereby showing that she had in fact previously learned the ASL sign. Moreover, the Gardners began to realize that rewarding particular signs with food and tickles was actually interfering with the intended result of conversational sign language. They changed their strategy so that food and meal times were never juxtaposed with instruction times. In addition, they stopped the tickle rewards during instruction because these generally resulted in laughing breakdowns. Instead, they set up a conversational environment that evoked communication, without the use of rewards for specific actions.[17][verification needed]
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When Washoe was shown an image of herself in the mirror, and asked what she was seeing, she replied: "Me, Washoe."[25][26] Primate expert Jane Goodall, who has studied and lived with chimpanzees for decades, believes that this might indicate some level of self-awareness.[26][27] Washoe appeared to experience an identity crisis when she was first introduced to other chimpanzees, seeming shocked to learn that she was not the only chimpanzee. She gradually came to enjoy associating with other chimpanzees.[28]

Washoe enjoyed playing pretend with her dolls, which she would bathe and talk to and would act out imaginary scenarios.[29][30] She also spent time brushing her teeth, painting and taking tea parties.[31]

When new students came to work with Washoe, she would slow down her rate of signing for novice speakers of sign language, which had a humbling effect on many of them.[32]
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en.wikipedia.org

Koko (gorilla) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Koko was a rather sad story near the end. She's far from the only one, as many apes now have learned sign language, but the real tragedy was how badly she wanted to have a kid, but how she never managed to find the right gorilla to have it with.
 
Walle talks.

A quick "meo" means hello

HSSSSSS means get the hell away from me.

Meow scratch wood means open the door

Meow and pat the bowl means FOOD

MEOW means get your ass over here.
 
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