Page 41 - Waterfall Issue 3 2021
P. 41
our planet with creatures whose
intelligence and social behaviour
have been grossly underestimated.
We now know, for instance, that
elephants can receive messages
through their feet by picking
up vibrations from the ground -
vibrations transmitted by other
elephants way out of sight. Elephants,
generally assumed to be silent
creatures are anything but. using
ultrasound – beyond the range of
human ears – they can communicate
in relays from family to family across
thousands of square kilometres.
Dolphins, even when kilometres
apart, communicate with whistle-like
calls and their ‘whistles’ can identify
them as individuals. using whistles,
they can call an individual ‘by name’
from out of a pod: “Hey Fred!” and
Fred will respond using his own
identity whistle to say: “I’m here!”
Apart from sound and ultrasound,
many animals communicate
using smells and body language
and, in the case of dolphins,
something bordering on
Extrasensory Perception (ESP).
There are institutions concentrating
on finding ways to converse with
crows and parrots and, as we are
discovering, they have amassed
some quite startling results.
If ever we are to talk with an animal,
Yet here we are trying to serious attempt was in 1931 when we will have to differentiate that
communicate with creatures that an American husband-wife team, animal’s grunts, snorts, clicks,
are totally cocooned in their own both psychologists, brought an infant squeals, screams, whistles, rumblings,
secret styles of communicating. chimpanzee into their home and hoots and roars as well as its body
raised it alongside their infant son. The language, and decipher them.
If we are to achieve success, which two youngsters got along famously.
is the most likely candidate? Most The couple gave up when, after a Surprisingly among the favourites
people would put their money on year, their son began making chimp is the elephant, the dolphin, Prairie
the chimpanzee, our nearest relative. noises and the chimp had made no dogs (ground squirrels) and even
Chimps are closer to humans than progress in the other direction. crows, whose teaspoon-sized
they are to all the other primates. Yet brain outwits that of a chimp’s.
despite almost a century of research The spinoff from the quest has been a
into ape communication, we’ve constant stream of the unexpected. It (Footnote: The writer is currently completing a
achieved very, very little. The first brought an awareness that we share book on cross-species communication.)
Waterfall Issue 3 2021 39
