The mystery of communication with animals

Perhaps it has happened to the reader. If you have a pet at home as a companion, some moment of hysterical despair emerges when attempts to communicate with the animal in question lead to nothing. That is, when the phrases: “Stop barking!”, “Come, come here”, “Get out of my bed, I ask you for the sake of the holy virgin” and even the usual: “What did you do, but please, what did you do?”, they become empty signifiers and moments of uncertainty and lack of communication.

Although it is true that such moments tend to be repeated more frequently in dealings between humans (even if we speak the same language), the feeling of isolation with pets can cause frustrations, since they are very close animals. They grow up with their guardians, they accompany them everywhere, they sleep on their pillows and do not move from their beds, if they have the flu or suffer from more serious illnesses, due to their pure feeling of familiarity and love.

That is why the question about communication between humans and animals arises frequently and in different ways it has been part of different scientific experiments and, of course, even philosophy. It is well known that one of the main questions in contemporary literature and philosophy looms over the very possibilities of language. And if we go back, not in vain, the first book of the Bible, in the Reina Valera version, said: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The issue of speech, communication, language and not only that which occurs between evolved animals such as humans, but between them and other species are part of the most current concerns and have always been.

Scholars like the Austrians Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch and the dutch Nikolaas Tinbergen They are considered the fathers of ethology (the science that studies the behavior of animals) and together they received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their trajectory in 1973. They showed different levels of forms of communication between members of a species, through careful observation of their ways of acting. So, von frisch He systematized the movements known as “the dance of the bees”, which shows instructions carried out between them through deciphered movements that could be compared to the speech of people, during the act of communicating. His studies traversed the 20th century, while the knowledge of linguists and philosophers also developed its own path.

Recently the Dutch philosopher Eva Meijer published in Argentina talkative animals (Editorial Taurus), a book that tries to summarize the latest scientific studies done to date, which also arise from the interdisciplinary accompaniment between ethologists, linguists and philosophers. “Philosophers for what?” the reader might ask. Actually, his contribution is central, since the founders of modern philosophy, and of classical philosophy as well, raised the exclusion of animals from the possibility of “thinking”, taking this word in broad terms and but exclusive to the Humans.

For kant, says Meijer, animals lacked logos or reason and were therefore excluded from the moral community. For Heidegger, continues Meijer, “language is so important in determining our place in the world that those without it cannot die, they simply disappear.” By being excluded from certain areas of social discussion, then they are left out of the determination of their rights. Simply, the legal issue considered them as “things or objects.”

do you remember Sandra the orangutan who lived in the old Buenos Aires Zoo, later Eco Park, in conditions of captivity, isolation and sadness that no one would have wished on the worst enemy? Well, in that case, in 2015, the Buenos Aires judge Elena Liberatori Faced with the claim of animal defense associations and after drawing on the most recent ethological, biological and philosophical studies, it determined that the “non-human person”, in reference to the orangutan Sandra, “was a subject of law” and she had to be transferred to a suitable place to preserve her life immediately. The legal battle lasted longer, because the Buenos Aires prosecutor’s office opposed it, the newspaper The nation editorialized against, all this while Stephen Hawking and hundreds of leading scientists signed a text in which they recognized in these “non-human animals” qualities that arose from various neurological developments that should grant them rights.

Sandra She finally traveled to an orangutan sanctuary in Florida. Currently, as Infobae reported in a note, she lives there surrounded by other rescued chimpanzees and orangutans and is the companion of Jethro, an adult male. Like in a rose novel with a happy ending. The case and the ruling had worldwide repercussions, since the recognition of Sandra as a “non-human person” marked a before and after in the region, at least, to establish jurisprudence.

Now, that is why interdisciplinarity when studying animals and their language and the communication between them and humans is so important. Even in the frameworks with which Kant or Heidegger raised the alienation of these “non-human animals” to the philosophical discussion, it could be done by determining the very languages ​​in which these species communicate.

The first ethological studies on the communication possibilities of animals were based on finding out how much of human language they could learn. The answer to that question could be more related to what neuronal association capacities a certain species had. For example, the chimpanzee Washoe was housed by a couple of scientists from the US Air Force, Allen and Beatrix Gardner, who “raised her like a daughter, dressed her in clothes and ate at the same table as them, went in carriages together and played away from home”. The experiment was a success. Through sign language she learned what the Gardners taught her and even conjugated “water” and “bird” to say swan. At the age of five, the scientists closed the experiment, Washoe was transferred to a research institute and lived in a laboratory until her death.

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How sad science sometimes produces. Washoe, before dying, had learned two hundred and fifty signs and had been able to express empathy for the death of a daughter of one of the scientists in charge of the laboratory.

They will surely remember the koko gorilla, who had a pet cat that accompanied her while she learned the language of humans. She also conveyed feelings to Francine Patterson, who studied it very closely until the day he died. For a while, Koko lived with another gorilla, Michael, who was able to recount, through the 450 learned signs, her memories of the day poachers killed her mother. Michael came from Cameroon.

But the question is, or not, it should be excluded, at least: “And between them? How do they communicate with each other? And the next question should be: “And how do human animals learn the language of non-human animals to communicate with them?”

Prairie dogs (which are not dogs, but rather a species of squirrel and are part of the rodent family, which live in mountainous areas of the United States) live communally. When they meet each other, they give a little kiss with their tongues – that’s how they recognize, yes it’s a relative, of course – but when they meet a hunter they alert all their peers. With the sound they emit they describe the intruder, whether it comes by land or by air. And if it is a human, read carefully: they mention their size, the color of their clothes, if they carry something like a firearm or an umbrella. While a human when faced with an alarm shouts: “Help!”, the prairie dogs came and went three times with their language.

Dolphins call each other by name, as well as having neurological secrets of an advanced species that have yet to be fully studied by human scientists. Elephants, donkeys, chimpanzees, pigs and many other species demonstrate self-awareness of themselves and their bodies through their recognition in the mirror. And so, like so many other animals and the fascinating studies carried out in their own fields (a biologist living among bonobo monkeys for years, without human contact) that are described by Meijer in talkative animals.

Book that conquered me when I read: “when a dog and a human love each other, when they look at each other they both produce oxytocin, the hug hormone that humans release when they see or hug a loved one.” And that’s where it comes in Leni.

My dachshund is one of the best people I’ve ever met. Sometimes she breaks everything, yes, but who wouldn’t? At least she does it for fun. Some days in ill health, she doesn’t move from my side and, when she sleeps in my bed, she pushes me until I wake up from almost falling. But it has its scientific reason: dachshunds have an average temperature of 40 degrees Celsius, therefore, when temperatures drop they feel the cold much more and, of course, they have very diffuse hair, unless they are long-haired dachshunds. therefore, they approach the body of their human for purely material purposes to seek more heat.

However, sometimes when reading a book I feel that sensation of a gaze resting on me, something that every person perceives from time to time. When I put the book down, I see the very sausage Leonor staring at me. She threw a toy at her to continue reading, she looks for it, plays for a while, and comes back. So I stare at her fixedly and lift her into my arms to read about her with hers, eight kilos of hers on her back. After reading the book, I now know that Leni (an abbreviation for Leonor, like Borges’s mother) was perhaps looking for my gaze to catch her daily dose of oxytocin. Drugs are a one way trip.

A few weeks ago Netflix premiered the first season of pet secretsa documentary miniseries narrated by Hugh Bonneville (the actor of paddington and Downton Abbey) that focuses on revealing to the audience the unknown abilities that both domestic animals and some other wild ones have, little known to the rest of humanity. From the incredible smell of dogs, through the six beats per second of giant tortoises, to the secret of why cats can almost fly with their little jumps. You have to see it, preferably, together with a non-human animal, so you learn from the example of others and, who knows, you may end up starring in a documentary.

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