"But rather than attempting to coax out something resembling the human language instinct (which we naturally possess with barely any effort at all), we should frame this research towards understanding the fascinating depths of animal intelligence in general."
Wholeheartedly agree. As much fun as it is seeing Bunny and the other animals speak, I'm far more interested in the "electronic noses" that are being developed a result of studying how dogs actually communicate. I like the idea of someday having a device that could smell and interpret what my dog smells when she sniffs where another dog has peed. To go even further, what if we had a device that could synthesize the signals that she's looking for when she investigates her world.
It's been a trope in science-fiction over the past seventy years that, someday, in the future, dogs and dolphins and chimps will all talk like humans. It's a lot more interesting to think about how we might communicate with them on their terms.
I've never heard of the electronic noses -- how interesting! There are so many ways in which animal intelligence beats ours by far, and I find that it's much worthwhile to investigate those rather than force our ways on them 😅
Hey Rebecca! Do you have any thoughts on the evolutionary path that our language-processing skills could have taken to become what they are today? I haven't dug too deeply into it but it seems like there's this big gulf between our innate linguistic abilities and the rest of the animal kingdom (no matter how smart they are).
Thanks for your question, Chris! I am admittedly very much not an evolutionary biologist, but I remember learning in one of my classes that humans have teeth and lips that are more adapted to forming complex sounds, we have better muscular controls over our tongue, and our pharynxes are bigger than those of primates due to our upright walking (gravity has lengthened our pharynxes over time, creating more vibration space). If you're interested in learning more about that, you can look into glossogenetics (the study of physical developments towards language production). But when it comes to how the non-physical language ability has evolved in humans... I'm actually not too sure! A great question worth exploring more :)
My dog trainer showed me these videos a couple of weeks ago. I found myself wrestling with the whole idea of asking the dogs in my life to speak my language instead of learning theirs a bit better.
Yes, I love how you reframe this. We can get so excited about dogs "talking" that we might completely miss out on whether or not our "translation" is accurate. Are we actually understanding their needs and responding appropriately? Or are we just excited about the novelty of it all? (It reminds me of another viral video of someone tickling a stingray out of water. It looks like the stingray is laughing, but we are actually just anthropomorphizing its suffering.)
"But rather than attempting to coax out something resembling the human language instinct (which we naturally possess with barely any effort at all), we should frame this research towards understanding the fascinating depths of animal intelligence in general."
Wholeheartedly agree. As much fun as it is seeing Bunny and the other animals speak, I'm far more interested in the "electronic noses" that are being developed a result of studying how dogs actually communicate. I like the idea of someday having a device that could smell and interpret what my dog smells when she sniffs where another dog has peed. To go even further, what if we had a device that could synthesize the signals that she's looking for when she investigates her world.
It's been a trope in science-fiction over the past seventy years that, someday, in the future, dogs and dolphins and chimps will all talk like humans. It's a lot more interesting to think about how we might communicate with them on their terms.
I've never heard of the electronic noses -- how interesting! There are so many ways in which animal intelligence beats ours by far, and I find that it's much worthwhile to investigate those rather than force our ways on them 😅
Hey Rebecca! Do you have any thoughts on the evolutionary path that our language-processing skills could have taken to become what they are today? I haven't dug too deeply into it but it seems like there's this big gulf between our innate linguistic abilities and the rest of the animal kingdom (no matter how smart they are).
Thanks for your question, Chris! I am admittedly very much not an evolutionary biologist, but I remember learning in one of my classes that humans have teeth and lips that are more adapted to forming complex sounds, we have better muscular controls over our tongue, and our pharynxes are bigger than those of primates due to our upright walking (gravity has lengthened our pharynxes over time, creating more vibration space). If you're interested in learning more about that, you can look into glossogenetics (the study of physical developments towards language production). But when it comes to how the non-physical language ability has evolved in humans... I'm actually not too sure! A great question worth exploring more :)
My dog trainer showed me these videos a couple of weeks ago. I found myself wrestling with the whole idea of asking the dogs in my life to speak my language instead of learning theirs a bit better.
Yes, I love how you reframe this. We can get so excited about dogs "talking" that we might completely miss out on whether or not our "translation" is accurate. Are we actually understanding their needs and responding appropriately? Or are we just excited about the novelty of it all? (It reminds me of another viral video of someone tickling a stingray out of water. It looks like the stingray is laughing, but we are actually just anthropomorphizing its suffering.)
RIP Hans
RIP 🙏
🙏🏻