• Question: If humans can communicate with each other and so can other animal species. But can different species understand each other e.g. cats and dogs or can species only communicate with others the same species as them?

    Asked by marialovesmusic to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 13 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by georgiasheerin, sarahtierney99, sophk, jessc, biginside, ninnin.
    • Photo: Kevin Mahon

      Kevin Mahon answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Not in the sense of ‘language’ but other animals are generally quite capable of understanding threatening postures to mean ‘stay away’ or can equate very aversive colouring (like wasps/arrow frogs) to mean ‘I am poisonous’.

      As I told another student however, there can be confusion. The classic example is cats and dogs, where the cats see the wagging tail as meaning ‘get away’ and the dogs think it means ‘come play with me!’

    • Photo: Louise de Raad

      Louise de Raad answered on 13 Jun 2012:

      Where humans use language to communicate, animals use different sorts of expressions or postures and animals are, to some extend, capable to interpret those of other species. I always wanted to learn “what animals are saying” and it’s great to be able to understand what a cat or monkey is saying .. Have a look at this website, http://www.living-links.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CebusSIGNteachers.pdf where there are examples of “how to speak capuchin”!! If you ever try it out in the wild, or in a zoo, you’ll see that they know what you mean…

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