Language and Humans
- When Con Slobodchikoff, the praire dog scientist called them wordsmith is that these dog have the ability to differentiate colors, sizes and shapes as evidence by the experiment he conducted while studying them. In each of his experiment, the dog chirps were different whenever a new color or size and shape was made except for the shapes circle and square which the dogs didn’t differentiate.
- Yes, I believe that the experience Klaus had when he realized that he was already understanding the behavior of the monkeys and he became hunted because he realized that he has become the 11th primate living in the Tai forest is the same with what infants feel when they first learn the meaning of words. Infants would feel excited that they have become part of the community because they are already understanding the words people around them are talking. However, not all infants give the same meaning to words. Sometimes, infants have their own words and own meanings to words that they utter making people around misunderstand them.
- In an way, the signaling systems of prairie dogs and Diana monkeys can be considered as an equivalent to the human language but these are still limited. I still consider the human language as superior over these signals because we can utter the words we want to say in an understandable manner and we can actually teach other primates our language and signals like when we teach our pet dogs. This ability is lacking in any other animal.
References:
Radiolab (2010). Wild Talk (Podcast).Retrieved from http://www.radiolab.org/popup_player/#
