Do Animals Talk To Each Other With Words That We Will Never Be Able To Understand?

every day i listen to birds singing everywhere. are they just singing? or are they singing to eachother in their own language? i hear dogs barking all the time and i wonder, are they just barking because thats what they do? or are they actually talking to eachother, just like we do, only in their own language using their own words that we'll never decipher or understand? is it just like when i hear two people speaking chinese or german to eachother? i have no idea what they are saying, its just random sounds to me, i know they are talking with words that they understand. do all animals in this world, in the oceans, in the sky and on the land actually talk to eachother, to their own species, with words that have real meaning? that only they can understand? or are they just vocalizing random sounds? i find this a truly fascinating mystery that i never hear mentioned or discussed...

Originally posted by blocula
every day i listen to birds singing everywhere. are they just singing? or are they singing to eachother in their own language. i hear dogs barking all the time and i wonder, are they just barking because thats what they do? or are they actually talking to eachother, just like we do, only in their own language using their own words that we'll never decipher or understand? is it just like when i hear two people speaking chinese or german to eachother? i have no idea what they are saying, its just random sounds to me, i know they are talking with words that they understand, but i have no idea what they are saying. do all animals in this world, in the oceans, in the sky and on the land actually talk to eachother,to their own species, with words that have real meaning? that only they can understand? or are they just vocalizing random sounds? i find this a truely fascinating mystery that i never hear mentioned or discussed...

Ha! ^^ This reminded me of the time my cat and her kitten were standing next to the ironing board. AKA the only object I won't let them get near and will try scaring them off at every opportunity.
They were just sitting under it like that, and I was passing through the hallway and could see them. They got my attention so I stood there looking.

This happened: the momma cat looked up at the ironing board (with iron on rest) and looked down at her kitten, the kitten meowed. The momma meowed. They both looked up at the iron. THE END

It looked to me like the momma was telling her kitten: This is the only object were not allowed to touch. I hear its dangerous. Kitten: really momma!? Momma: Yes.



Make of it what you will. But yea I suppose that sums up how I feel about animals hehehe

My personal opinion is that some animals have language, for example dolphins, but that most are doing, what conventional science would say, which I'm not to keen to get into to detail about, and also, sometimes or most of the time, that feeling is carried on the sounds they make, and that this information is directly intuited by pretty much anything capable of hearing it, perhaps even if you don't hear it, whether or not we assemble that intuition into our awareness is another matter of course.. cheers!

I like to think they are talking to each other.
Maybe not domesticated dogs or animals, since they weren't raised in the wild and wouldn't have any way to learn the "languages" but I'm fairly certain at least birds communicate with each other.

all or most of these animals that seem to be talking to each other everywhere have been here on earth and evolving for a lot longer than we have been, why would'nt they have developed their own true language?

I grew up on a farm. We had goats,cows,chickens,horses ect. I'd spend my days in the fields playing and watching the animals. I have no doubt that they can communicate! Some times it seemed the goats were having a meeting on how best to catch and torture me lol. Humans seem to think were the smartest things on this planet but I for one have met animals that are way smarter than some humans I know!

Animals have their own, usually only share within their own, but not always with others of their same species. Chips, barks, meow, neighs, a whale sining, etc., is communication by vocals if not added with or separate from body language and scent(pheromones). Cats for example, may meow at your for food an attention, saying look at me "I want this or that", thought to another cat (unless a kitten) they will use body language and growls more often. A dog for example will bark at a cat to play but depending on the cats relationship to the dog may rear up(to look bigger), run eat., or may begin to play with the dog. Animal watching between species is great fun.
This touching video may be a form of communication between species.

reply to post by Ghost375


I love the sound the Blackbird's make, especially at evening time when they sing out so lovely prior to retiring for the night. Throughout the years I have tried to learn just what is said here, have learned how a Blackbird would stop singing and suddenly chirp out a sound that i can only explain as , Pink, Pink,Pink.....it does this when a cat is seen and must therefore be warning others. Have wondered how it can be so easy for a Parrot to hear us and then start to repeat our words. How a Dog can so easily learn the 'roll over, show us your paw, wait or maybe fetch', yet we - as you have all been saying - Why do we find it difficult to somehow understand our beloved Pets
Though as just mentioned, the cats were somehow understood by their loving owner.
Have fun, we have maybe just arrived on this ruddy planet....

I'm sure there's some level of communication amongst animals, even cross-species.

On the forefront of my mind, is the recent VA quake where MSM reported that animals in the zoo were flippin their shi* 15 minutes before the quake hit. The critters all went into defensive positions: trees, etc.
Started with one group and then the 'word' was sent down the line...

Pretty amazing, IMHO.

My dog, for one, talks all the time! Although my family thinks I'm insane as I carry on 'conversation' with him~ lol

First, there is way to little variation for dogs to be barking to each other anything other than primitive emotions back and forth. Im sure they appreciate the nuances of it greater then we can, but lets refrain from the disney anthropormorphisms and understand were talking about an animal.

My dog will run across the street if she sees another dog on the other side, regardless of whether she sees a car passing by. Is that intelligent, or primitive? By primitive i mean emotional ie; the rational mind is subjugated to the primal instincts.

Dogs communicate in a very primitive way. However they act, extrapolate that knowledge and apply it to their barks. Same thing.

As for birds, and what they are chirping to each other. There probably is fairly complex systems of communication between various birds, and its hard to really explain what it is.

With a dog, because we have domesticated them, we have taken them out of their natural and instinctual environment, and so in a way, brought them up a world, out of the purely primitive and wild animal order. But Birds, because they seem to exist at such a majestic place within our world; in the skies and trees. One can almost holistically think that their movements, and chirps have a metaphysical significance.

This is what the ancient science of augury was about. Analyzing the movements of the birds, believing them to be transmitting patterns from a higher spiritual world above them.

Campbell’s monkeys appear to combine the same calls in different ways, using rules of grammar that turn sound into language. Whether their rudimentary syntax echoes the speech of humanity’s evolutionary ancestors, or represents an emergence of language unrelated to our own, is unclear.

Either way, they’re far more sophisticated than we thought. “This is the first evidence we have in animal communication that they can combine, in a semantic way, different calls to create a new message,” said Alban Lemasson, a primatologist at the University of Rennes in France. “I’m not sure it has strong parallels with humans, in the way that we will find a subject and object and verb. But they have meaningful units combined into other meaningful sequences, with rules imposed on how they’re combined.”

Lemasson’s team previously described the monkeys’ use of calls with specific meanings in a paper published in November. It detailed the monkeys’ basic sound structures and their uses: “Hok” for eagle, “krak” for leopard, “krak-oo” for general disturbance, “hok-oo” and “wak-oo” for general disturbance in forest canopies. A sixth call, “boom,” was used in non-predatory contexts, such as when calling a group together for travel or arguing with neighboring groups.

source

Definitely some animals for sure do. Whales for instance. Different populations of the same whale species have different "dialects", similar sounding yet distinctively different from each other. If I remember correctly they were talking about Orcas ( Killer Whales).

Here ya go.

None of the spoken languages test as being the "native tongue" of any human. It's telepathy. That's the "native tongue". I bet it's the same for animals. My dog concurs. (I read her mind)

The testing was biofeedback. Skeptics, go away.....your need for proof, links, scientific studies etc cannot be fulfilled by this poster. You can take this or leave it....but leave it alone!

Of course animals talk to each other. We're not the only animals on this planet that can you know.

The only thing about us though is that while we can learn other human languages, animals are far superior to us because they can learn our words. Any oet owner will tell you that. Every one of the cats I've owned for the last 23 years have understood full sentences without me having to train them to do so. One such cat ran into the kitchen when I told it to go there without having to stand near the kitchen (nor pointing at it....I know pointing at things is no good because animals look at the end of your finger and nto where you're pointing to but felt I had to add this just in case)

Animals and especially domesticated pets aren't given the credit they're due for being intelligent and able to understand not only their own language but ours too.

reply to post by dontreally


Actually, dogs are very excitable and curious and so a dog crossing the street or barking towards another dog is purely out of excitement at seeing another of its own species. Sure, some of it can be primal and instinctive but not everything.

This despite me thinking that dogs are filthy, disgusting creatures.

supposed "intelligent superiority", as humans think and say we are, when we compare ourselves to every other living thing, is not to me a necessary prerequisite to have evolved a spoken language. i think that when i listen to two chinese people talking to eachother and dont have a clue as to what "they are really saying", is exactly the same thing as when i hear birds singing, or dogs barking to eachother and i dont have a clue as to what "they are really saying". for us to think and say that they "are just animals" and incapable of intelligent communication is typical and egotistical of our "better and smarter than everything else" mentality...animals have been evolving on earth for many millions of years longer than we have and i believe that what they vocalize, are actual words being spoken in an unknown language, that we may or may not be able to translate someday. perhaps in another hundred years, if we have "gotten over ourselves" by then, there may be an advanced computer capable of deciphering the languages of animals into words that we can understand...

reply to post by curious7


Yes. I equated excited emotions with primal instinct ie; its primitive.

I never said Dogs werent incredibly cute and almost humanlike in their interactions, albeit, a retarded human.

My sister and i often joke about that.

I am --convinced-- that animals, at least cats thus far, speak to each other --telepathicaly--, I have watched this take place. One of my cats will be in a room with me, and when I give him some new food that is good and different, or when I do something out of routine, like reach up on a top shelf for an old hobby kit, etcetera, for example, the cat will turn his head and just sit there and stare in the direction of the other cat in the other room, and 2 seconds later, the other one will come running in to join us, as if this one said, "hey my brother, you should see what mommy is doing here, hurry come look!" And My mother watched a ferel mommy cat on her property, turn around and stare at her following kittens, who then about-face and retreat back into the bushes.
It's just got to be telepathy!