Obviously, humans have hundreds of different languages spoken all over the world. Are we the only ones though? The Washington Post released an article about a study done with macaques (a type of monkey) where they took babies from one regions macaques and switched them with another regions. They found that the macaques didn’t learn they customs or cultures in the new settings, even when being raised by a different regions macaques parents. This lead to the conclusion that an animals ability to communicate is completely within its genes, and is not able to adapt and learn a different “language” so to speak. (University of Pennsylvania psychologists and biologists findings).
Although the macaques communication abilities were in their genes, other species of animals abilities differ. Whales, songbirds, bats, and dolphins were all found to be able to “speak” in a certain dialect or accent in accordance to where they are from, but are able to understand accents from other parts of the world. Although they can understand this different language, it is hard for them to learn to actually speak it.
Even though most animals are like the macaques and have language set in their genes, animals are still able to communicate with each other, despite a language barrier in most species. Just like humans, there are many different types of communications. from noises, to gestures, to symbols, language barriers have not kept people from communicating from each other, like it has not kept animals from communicating with each other.
Don’t know why, but I always think that if those animals have their own language, it must be so creppy. For that, I did a little extended reading in this field in high school, and the reachers used monkeys too. During that research, people found out that monkeys can follow your words like ” sit down” or ” push that box” within the rewards giving. But actually, they may don’t know what that speakings really mean, they can follow the words is because of practicing. But anyway, until today, there’s no real answer for the question we talked, because there’s so much species in this world, so much work need to be done in the future research.
Wow what a great finding. I’m curious to know if scientists could develop a way to actually translate animal language into human languages. That would be amazing. Also, do you think that animals can eventually learn to “speak” other animals’ languages? Lastly, how were scientists able to conduct an experiment to test that languages exist between animals? Awesome post!
This is so weird to think about, its almost like the show ‘Wild Thornberries’ that used to appear on tv and the girl was able to communicate with animals. Anyways, it does bring up a valid point on the topic of communication, is the ability to communicate something we’ve inherited from evolved species? Just something to think about….
Hey Anne! Actually I have been thinking a lot about animals speaking in different languages. I always thought animals don’t have languages but some simple sounds for them to communicate with each other. After reading your blog I learned that sadly they can’t really learn a different type of language. However here is a video about a parrot talking like a human haha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdhqkWIgkLY