Prairie Dogs Have a Language All Their Own & Can Describe What Humans Look Like
http://www.the7thfire.com/Animals_Birds_Fish_Reptilian/Furry_feathered_fin_friends.html
by staff, 7th Fire.com, source:
Rodent species: Prairie dogs - only found in North America - call out to warn their friends when a predator approaches their habitat, scientists believe. Not only that, but they have calls for 'human', one for 'hawk' and another for 'coyote', radio station NPR reports.
Professor Con Slobodchikoff, of Northern Arizona University, has been studying prairie dogs for 30 years. He is particularly interested in deciphering their language because to do so would 'open the door for understanding how other species communicate'.
The prairie dog's barks, yips and chirping sounds are really a sophisticated form of communication that contains a vocabulary of at least 100 words, Professor Slobodchikoff claims. 'The little yips prairie dogs make contain a lot of information,' he said.
'They can describe details of predators such as their size, shape, colour and how fast they are going. 'They also can discriminate whether an approaching animal is a coyote or a dog, and they can decipher different types of birds.'
Professor Slobodchikoff and his students hid themselves in prairie dog villages and recorded the noises the rodents made whenever a human, hawk, dog or coyote passed through. What they found was that the prairie dog issues different calls depending on the intruder. The researchers discovered this by analysing the recorded calls for frequency and tone. They concluded that it doesn't have one call for 'danger', rather it has a collection of warning noises - or a language.
To further develop this line of investigation, Professor Slobodchikoff gathered four volunteers and had them walk through a prairie dog village four times. On each occasion they wore the same clothing, except for different colour shirts. The prairie dogs responded by issuing different calls, depending on the colour of the volunteers' shirts.
Professor Slobodchikoff then discovered they also issued different calls for varying heights, and even for abstract shapes including cardboard circles, squares and triangles. He told NPR: 'Essentially they were saying, "Here comes the tall human in the blue," versus, "Here comes the short human in the yellow."'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1349372/Prairie-dogs-language-humans-look-like.html#ixzz1DK6H6paO
The article is reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and is for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
It's fascinating that they have that extensive a vocabulary. Dogs have vocabularies of only 40 sounds, while cats have 25.
ReplyDeleteBack in the states, I identified 11 sounds my cat made and was sometimes able to communicate orally with her.
On one occasion, when she questioningly approached my bed, I said, "Rrr-ow," quickly rolling the R's and giving the ow a rising tone. She understood.
On a particularly hot day, she said to me in a rasping, pleading voice, "Rowwww." I told her there wasn't a thing I could do about the heat.
I've never been able to converse with my dogs the way I could with my cat. My dogs understand too many English words for me to try learning their language.
Now THAT is fascinating. My nephew was a latchkey kid, with both parents working, so when he got home from school, there was no one there except the cat. I was visiting my family which was several states away and spent the afternoon with my beloved nephew and he showed me how he can talk to his cat.
ReplyDeleteHe literally talked to him in cat language and the doggone cat responded and they carried on a conversation like I could not believe. I was heart broken that was what he was doing afternoons instead of interacting with his mother learning lessons of life and getting his questions answered about issues that come up in a childs life.
It was heartbreaking, but fascinating none the less.