Interspecies Communications Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Interspecies commu nications is a phenomenon and an area of study. The systematic study of communications within and between species is an emerging discipline that seeks to find ways to develop human communications with other species and to identify and understand communications between different species. Communications, the sending of messages that have intelligent or rational meanings that can be comprehended, takes places when feelings or thoughts are shared between one life form and another. Intraspecies communications occurs between members of the same species. Interspecies communications occurs between members of different species. From the most ancient times, people have observed species communicating among themselves. Fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals communicate in forms of intraspecies communications.

Beginning in prehistoric times, humans began to domesticate wild dogs, donkeys, hawks, hunting cats, camels, and cows. Simple observation of domesticated animals demonstrates that humans communicate with a large range of different species. Humans have trained dogs, birds, horses, camels, and donkeys as working livestock. When humans use trained dogs to guard and herd sheep, the dog uses signals to move sheep in a desired direction. Much of this communication is reflexive or instinctual. Dogs, horses, and elephants have also been trained for war, which seems to excite the aggressive nature in these animals and also communicate fear or aggressiveness. Since the end of World War II, extended studies have been made of dolphins and some of the great apes. These studies have attempted to teach animals language that can be understood by humans. The U.S. Navy has trained dolphins to locate explosive sea mines and scout for enemy vessels, especially submarines.

Rational Communication

Recent studies with dolphins and primates such as Bonobos and chimpanzees have sought to demonstrate that they can learn words and communicate rationally with humans. Since the 1960s, a number of ape-language projects were established to study the possibility of developing communications between apes and humans. One ape sign language center was the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Bonobos (Pan paniscus), the most rare of the great ape species, are found in the Republic of Congo. They are very matriarchal and about the size of chimpanzees. Kanzi, a Bonobo studied at Emory University, learned to communicate with humans using a keyboard with 120 symbols. He was such a quick learner that he apprehended the meaning of words and symbols without any instructions, or with little training. His active vocabulary increased to over 200 words and to 500 words for his receptive vocabulary. Psychological studies of the ways children acquire language skills, developing rapidly in the 1970s, were helpful in teaching Kanzi. In return, Kanzi was a contributor to an emerging theory that children could be taught to sign as communication long before they learn to speak.

Some researchers have engaged in studies of communications with whales using music. Others have sought to develop communications with cetaceans using echolocation clicks, songs, and whistles. Communication by humans with other species that is an exchange of rational thoughts requires humans to function on the behavioral time of the species. Children often tell adults that they can communicate with animals, but have been told that it’s “just their imagination.” Research efforts have noted that some imagination is required for humans to be empathetic with an animal communications subject, especially when the communication is nonverbal and nonbehavioral telepathic. The Samantha Khury Institute of Interspecies Communications in Sweden specializes in this from of communication.

Interspecies communications studies of the variety of ways that animals communicate between themselves have been conducted in increasing number in recent decades. Researchers all over the world have advanced understanding of the vocabulary and syntax of animal species languages. The rapid development of computer devices that can be used for interspecies communications holds great promise for future breakthroughs of communications by humans with other species. These devices could possibly enable not only speech recognition, but also smell, behavioral, or animal sentience to be transformed in a hand-held black-box by a system of artificial intelligence that delivers intelligible communications.

Bibliography:

Dawn Hayman, If Only They Could Talk (Simon & Schuster, 2005);
Roger Fouts, Stephen Tukel Mills, and Jane Goodall, Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees (Sagebrush Education Resources, 1998);
Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin, Kanzi: The Ape on the Brink of the Human Mind (John Wiley & Sons, 1994);
Penelope Smith, Animal Talk: Interspecies Telepathic Communication (Beyond Words Publishing, 1999).