The Language of Animals

Von Frisch has made exact studies on the mode of communica tion of honey-bees. The worker bees, on returning to the hive from a productive food-source which they have found, dance a recruiting dance. During this the scent organs, situated between the fifth and sixth abdominal segments, are extruded. The dance moves in a quite definite and peculiar manner in and out be tween other workers that happen to be in the hive, inducing them now to fly out to work. The type of dance varies according to whether a source of nectar or of pollen has been discovered.

Birds.

The sounds and speech of birds are extremely varied. Sounds are produced by the lower larynx, or syrinx. In true song-birds the sounds can become songs which charm the human ear. Yet even these sounds are the mere outlet of a state of excitement. The birds have no intentional purpose in mind. Ac cording to the most recent view the song of birds is not necessarily connected with pairing, but it bursts forth whenever the bird is labouring under strong excitement. This occurs, of course, most frequently in the pairing season. No song is given when a bird is unwell. The calls, warning notes, etc., of song-birds must be distinguished as inborn instinctive impulses, distinct from the sexually differentiated song of the males. This is a secondary instinct and is in many species not entirely inborn, but it must be acquired by the young males through imitation of older birds.

Quite a number of birds have the desire and the capacity of imi tating strange noises. Such, for example, are the jay, the butcher bird, the starling, the mocking-bird and others. Ravens and their relatives and parrots, especially grey parrots, are best able to imitate the human voice. But even in these cases, nothing ever exists beyond the satisfaction of this curious imitative impulse. There is never any real speech, in the sense of any meaning being attached by the animal to the sounds which it makes. In the majority of cases the speech of parrots is merely an automatic reaction to external stimuli. In the case of those very rare parrots which apparently speak in a purposeful manner, as for instance by crying "Come in" when a knock is heard at the door, or by demanding food, training has undoubtedly taken place, although this training need not have been given intentionally by the owner of the bird. The parrot in question may very well, without any

intention on the part of the owner, have associated, in its impulse for phonetic imitation, the words with the consequential arrival of food or other reward. It goes without saying that an "under standing" of the words on the part of the bird is completely ex cluded, since even the best instructed parrots can never say any other words or sentences than those which they have learnt.

Mammals.

These produce sounds with the larynx. In their language also there are cries of appeal, cries for warning and mating calls. Horses neigh, snort, whinny and mares squeal in addition. Dogs bark, growl, whine or howl and they can modify these sounds in loudness, pitch and duration. The sound-language of apes has been investigated on more than one occasion. Garner (Dgoo) was the first to use the phonograph in studying the lan guage of apes. With capuchin monkeys he succeeded in establishing 3o different sounds having different meanings. Mammals in general have at their disposal a more or less well-developed gesture speech in addition to sound-speech and this is particularly evident in apes. Every species of ape and each group of nearly related species has its own inborn sounds, lip-signs, bodily postures and movements, by which the animals make known to one another their feelings and intentions. The means of imparting informa tion are particularly numerous in the anthropoids. The Teneriffe chimpanzees, when pleasurably excited, gave vent to a repeated sound of "och" (as in "loch"), their tears were accompanied by a deep "oo," and grief was expressed by a high "ee" sound.

Possibly the reason why animal sound-language has under gone no further progress is that animal speech is always an expression of the prevailing feeling of excitement, humour and perhaps also emotion. The sound-expressions of animals never represent facts. They are not names for things. Hence animals have no vocabulary. Animal language is concerned wholly with feelings, giving no expression at all to intellectual events. Even those animals which have at their command a multiform sound language are never able to carry on a "conversation." The same statement is true of gesture-speech.