Animal Communication and Human Language

320 Words2 Pages
It is a well established fact that animals are able to communicate with one another. Just like humans they need to convey information essential to survival to others around them. Communication can be defined as 'the transmission of a signal from one animal to another, such that the sender benefits, on average, from the response of the recipient' (Slater, 1983) In humans the main method of communication is often thought of as spoken language, but animals are physiologically incapable of speaking to each other. Through the evolutionary process they have developed highly specialised methods of non-verbal communication, many of which are not used by humans. Many animals use visual communication to convey information, an example of which can be seen in ‘ honeybees’. Honeybees have developed a dance to communicate the location of nectar. When a bee returns to the hive after finding nectar it performs a 'waggle' dance to inform fellow workers where the food is located. Van Frisch (1955) discovered bees dance in a figure of eight, with the axis of the dance representing direction in relation to the sun, and the rate of the 'waggle' representing distance. It is thought a form of auditory communication accompanies this dance. Wenner (1964) found bees sometimes make a noise whilst doing this dance, and Esch ( 1967) found silent dances had little effect on the other bees. They also use olfactory communication. The smell of the nectar remains on the dancer, and the bees can locate the nectar by searching for the scent smelt on the dancer. hence,Animals commonly use olfactory communication because their sense of smell is often much more advanced than that found in humans. Many mammals leave a scent, either to signal their territory boundaries, or to show they have been present in that area. Dogs leave their scent by urination. This is usually outside their
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