Question: do you think that we will ever be able to conect with animals in our own language? apart from them understanding basic commands...

  1. It depends on the animal you’re referring to. Some animals, like the great apes (including chimps and gorillas), or dolphins, may in theory be capable of understanding us and responding. For example, there has been a lot of work done with gorillas and chimps to teach them sign language so that they can learn to use language, but the results of this research are controversial. It’s hard to tell if they can use language like we can, or if they learn only a few words and can’t actually use it to make sentences the way that we can. This is a little bit like trying to talk with someone who doesn’t speak the same language you do, like if you meet someone who speaks Russian and you don’t; you may learn a few words, but you will have trouble forming complete sentences that ‘sound right’ unless you do a lot of work. Animals may never be able to cross that gap. And animals outside of the primates, dolphins, whales, possibly elephants, likely don’t have brains complex enough to communicate with us in that way at all.

    More generally, humans have a unique ability to produce speech, so even if we can teach the smarter animals to use our language it’s unlikely or even impossible that they would be able to speak it back to us.

    None of this should be taken to mean that animal communication is inferior to ours! Most (or all) animal communication isn’t as complex as ours is when it comes to speech, but animals have produced a lot of really beautiful examples of communication. Bee dances, bird songs, whales songs, even squid colour signalling, all are intricate and amazingly evolved ways of communicating that we can appreciate in their own right.

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