Why Wild Animals Talk and What They're Saying to One Another

Nonhuman animals (animals) are constantly "talking" with one another using sounds, smells, visual signals, and various combinations thereof. In his fascinating new book titled Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication, Dr. Arik Kershenbaum focuses on vocal communication and takes us on a wonderful journey through the animal kingdom including the majestic howls of wolves, the enchanting chatter of parrots, the melodic clicks of dolphins, and the spirited grunts of chimpanzees.

There's a widespread and veritable internet of animals out in the wild, and animals are not only talking with members of their own species but also with individuals of other species Arik's latest ear-opening book, based on the latest science and wonderful stories written for a broad audience, is a wonderful, highly educational read.¹ I learned a lot from reading it, and it made me rethink about various topics I've been studying for decades. Here's what he had to say about his landmark book.

Source: Penguin Press

​Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Why Animals Talk?

Arik Kershenbaum: I work with animals in the wild a lot, and people often say to me, “That’s so cool. What are they saying?” Everyone finds the question fascinating, but there’s so much more to it than just understanding the “meaning” in those sounds. I wrote this book to help people stop and think more closely about the diversity of animal behaviours we see in the world. Not just about “translating” animal sounds, but more about why those animals make the sounds they do. What makes some animals need a complex way of talking, but others really don’t? These are the questions we need to ask if we want to understand who animals are and what they are thinking.

MB: How does your latest book relate to your background and general areas of interest?

AK: This is really my core area of interest: vocal communication in wild animals. I’ve got two complementary directions. Firstly, listening to and observing animals in the wild to understand their behaviour and cognition and to understand what they’re saying and why. Secondly, I use those sounds that animals make to help with conservation initiatives. Both are really important, and both feed into the book. There’s a huge deficit in our understanding of animal behaviour and animal cognition, because animals in the wild are so difficult to observe and study. And it’s studying the way that animals behave in the wild that is crucial because we can’t understand animals without understanding them in the environment in which they evolved.

MB: Who do you hope to reach in your interesting and important book?

AK: I want to reach both types of people: those that think that animals don’t talk at all, and those that think that animals have a language just like us. Both positions are understandable, but neither properly reflects the real nature of who animals are. It would be nice to think that animals have a language of their own, and if we could only understand it, we would be able to converse with them as we do with other humans. But doesn’t that do an injustice to the animals themselves? Really, we should all be striving to understand animals as they are, not as we want them to be. The animal world is so diverse, it seems a shame to reduce such complex creatures either to mindless automata or to pale reflections of us humans.

MB: What are some of the major topics you consider?

Source: Jesús Esteban San José/Pexels.

AK: The main theme running through the book is that understanding animal talk means understanding animal societies. It’s those social relationships that drive the need for communication, so the signals that animals need to make reflect the nature of their interpersonal interactions. They may have small family groups like gibbons or wolves, large loose affiliations like hyraxes, or complex multilayered societies like dolphins or chimpanzees. What animals say to each other has got to be viewed in the context of what kinds of social interactions they have.

The other thing that comes up again and again, although I touch on it very lightly in each case, is the question of "What is a language?" Many people say to me, “Of course animals have a language; they communicate, don’t they?” In fact, all animals communicate, so I don’t have any problem making it clear in the title of my book that animals do talk.

But the question of what a language is and whether any species other than humans have such an ability is a very difficult question. Hopefully people will think that my treatment of this question is satisfying. In short, it seems to be the case that many other species have different elements of that language ability, and some may even have quite a complete ability to use language—for instance, learning it from us. But none of them seem to do so in the wild. And that tells us a great deal about cognition across the animal world, and how our own language may have evolved.

MB: How does your book differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?

AK: I’ve chosen to tell this story of why animals talk through the eyes of someone observing animal behaviour in the wild. I’ve tried to use as many of my own anecdotes from the field to bring people closer to the world of these creatures. It’s really only by seeing the world in which animals live that you can comprehend what it is they might be saying and why. So it’s a very colourful book, more focused on painting a picture of the social interactions of animals, and where communication fits into those interactions, rather than describing what sounds the animals make and what they might mean. It’s a journey into the world of some amazing creatures, told through their world of communication.

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MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about how and why animals talk it will increase their appreciation for their cognitive and emotional lives?

AK: I think it’s essential. The link between cognition, emotion, and communication is a tightly wound web. Animals evolve intelligence in all its different forms because it gives them an evolutionary benefit. Emotion and communication, too, and the nature and relationship between these three are absolutely at the core of who animals are. We live in an immensely diverse world, but that diversity is under threat, and we may not have much time to reveal those complexities of who animals really are. That’s vital, if for no other reason than that it tells us a lot about who we are ourselves and where we came from.