Tag: sophonts

Chimp Civilizations

Observed unique behaviors include feasting on leopards and using tools to harvest giant African snails.

In one of the most dangerous regions of the planet, against all odds, a huge yet mysterious population of chimpanzees appears to be thriving. The chimps were completely unknown until recently – apart from the local legends of giant apes that ate lions and howled at the moon.

Whale culture

a new study finds strong evidence that a group of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the Gulf of Maine (map) is sharing a newly observed feeding behavior via their social networks. (See related blog: “Sharks Have Social Networks, Learn From Friends.”)

That behavior, called lobtail feeding, was first recorded in 1 whale in the Gulf of Maine in 1980. Since then, 278 humpback whales—out of 700 observed individuals that frequent the Stellwagen Bank (map) area—have employed the strategy

Interspecies communication

Bonobo understanding several 1000s words in English. Some of the candidate species with enough consciousness do not have the right vocal cords, so touch-based UIs might be the way forward for 2-way communication.

2014-01-25: Various species

A recent workshop on Analyzing Animal Vocal Sequences provided some illuminating views of what we know and what we don’t know about animal communication. In particular one notes the increased use of Machine Learning algorithms that are currently used to make sense of human interactions on the web. Talks at the workshop included:Unraveling dolphin communication complexity, Singing isn’t just for the birds, Automated identification of bird individuals using machine learning, A receiver’s perspective on analyzing animal vocal sequences, Animal communication sequence analysis using information theory, Machine learning for the classification of animal vocalizations and Information theoretic principles of human language and animal behavior

2015-05-23: Birds and Squirrels

squirrels understand ‘bird-ese,’ and birds understand ‘squirrel-ese.’ When red squirrels hear a call announcing a dangerous raptor in the air, or they see such a raptor, they will give calls that are acoustically “almost identical” to the birds

2019-11-07: Dog talk

Stella, an 18-month-old dog, can use a sound board to communicate using the 29 words she knows in short phrases and has been learning to ‘talk’ by pressing on buttons since she was 8 weeks old.

People.com interviewed Christina about Stella and how she can put words together to make simple sentences.

Using nose-activated vests and touchscreens, our canine pals are being trained to summon help for their handlers—and much more.

2023-01-31: Great apes (and humans?) share sign language. The research is plausible but the reported results hover around 57.3 ± 11.9%, so not very conclusive

All the great apes – chimps and bonobos – have an overlap of about 95% of the gestures they use to communicate. “So we already had a suspicion that this was a shared gesturing ability that might have been present in our last shared ancestor. But we’re quite confident now that our ancestors would have started off gesturing, and that this was co-opted into language.” The great apes use a whole “lexicon” of 80 gestures, each conveying a message to another member of their group. Messages like “groom me” are communicated with a long scratching motion; a mouth stroke means “give me that food” and tearing strips from a leaf with teeth is a chimpanzee gesture of flirtation.
Volunteers watched videos of the chimps and bonobos gesturing, then selected from a multiple choice list of translations. The participants performed significantly better than expected by chance, correctly interpreting the meaning of chimpanzee and bonobo gestures over 50% of the time.


2023-04-21: Sperm whales

We detail a scientific roadmap for advancing the understanding of communication of whales that can be built further upon as a template to decipher other forms of animal and non-human communication. Sperm whales, with their highly-developed neuroanatomical features, cognitive abilities, social structures, and discrete click-based encoding make for an excellent model for advanced tools that can be applied to other animals in the future. We outline the key elements required for the collection and processing of massive datasets, detecting basic communication units and language-like higher-level structures, and validating models through interactive playback experiments. The technological capabilities developed by such an undertaking hold potential for cross-applications in broader communities investigating non-human communication and behavioral research.


2023-04-22: Parrot video calls

A group of domesticated birds were taught to call one another on tablets and smartphones. The birds engaged in most calls for the maximum allowed time. They formed strong preferences—in the preliminary pilot study. Ellie, a Goffin’s cockatoo, became fast friends with a California-based African grey named Cookie. “It’s been over a year and they still talk”. The types of vocalizations the birds used suggested they were mirroring the call and response nature they engage in in the wild—“hello, I’m here!” in parrot-speak. The most popular parrots were also the ones who initiated the most calls, suggesting a reciprocal dynamic similar to human socialization. And while, in large part, the birds seemed to enjoy the activity itself, the human participants played a big part in that. Some parrots relished the extra attention they were getting from their humans, while others formed attachments for the humans on the other side of the screen.

Trader elephants

At the main Pondicherry temple, an elephant will bless you — by tapping its trunk on your head — if you hand it some money. Of course this is a temple elephant and it is also a Mengerian elephant. The elephant has no use for money but understands that it is a general medium of exchange. The elephant hands the money over to the temple authority and is later rewarded with food.

The elephant is not merely trading, but it is engaged in indirect exchange and thus in monetary economics. There is in fact a sign up forbidding such Mengerian transactions, but the elephant seems not to notice it.

Dolphin Language

the first identified word was jerks.

Researchers in the United States and Great Britain have made a significant breakthrough in deciphering dolphin language in which a series of 8 objects have been sonically identified by dolphins. Team leader, Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com, ‘spoke’ to dolphins with the dolphin’s own sound picture words. Dolphins in 2 separate research centers understood the words, presenting convincing evidence that dolphins employ a universal “sono-pictorial” language of communication.

see also

Marine biologists have connected 2 dolphin research habitats with underwater microphones and speakers. They hope the chat line will enable a dolphin calf to learn to “talk” by communicating with dolphins in the other facility.

Uplift Universe is required context for this talk. in particular: Neo-Dolphins

If the dolphins engaged in meaningful communication with near-human complexity, the frequency of these sounds would yield a logarithmic slope of -1—just like most human languages. Dolphin recordings had a gradient of -.95. This suggests that “dolphinese” may exhibit syntax. In comparison, the squirrel monkeys’ Zipf slope was never lower than -0.6, meaning the signals were too random to exhibit syntax. The cotton plant, which communicates through chemical emissions, had a signal distribution slope closer to -1.6, meaning the signals were too redundant.