I should have seen this. Five years ago I linked the development of
large social groups with the development of human language. One supported the other. This factor is now been more and more recognized
in wild populations such as crows in particular.
Now we come to the much larger prairie
dog brain and the use of large communal colonies. Their descriptive language is
obviously quite powerful and this report indicates greater than 100 words. Yet recall that 100 words are sufficient to
anchor you in any human language. That
is enough to make thirty percent known and the balance on the way to been
intelligible.
Here we discover that a prairie dog
can call out a description of an intruder which is rather valuable information. It gives us no information of ordinary
communication needs but suggests that is way more developed here than would
seem likely.
It is interesting that abstract
shapes are also described. A lot of easy
assumptions and bad guesses just got trashed and we will have to revisit every
species to properly observe their modes of communication.
Prairie dogs have a language all of their own and 'can describe what
humans look like'
By GRAHAM
SMITH
Last updated at 5:49 PM on 21st January 2011
It's a language that would twist the tongue of even the most
sophisticated linguist.
Prairie dogs talk to each other and can describe what different human
beings look like, according to scientists.
The species - only found in North America
- call out to warn their friends when a predator approaches their habitat.
Rodent species: Prairie dogs - only found in North
America - call out to warn their friends when a predator
approaches their habitat, scientists believe
Not only that, but they have calls for 'human', one for 'hawk' and
another for 'coyote', radio station NPR reports.
Professor Con Slobodchikoff, of Northern Arizona
University
He is particularly interested in deciphering their language because to
do so would 'open the door for understanding how other species communicate'.
The prairie dog's barks, yips and chirping sounds are really a
sophisticated form of communication that contains a vocabulary of at least 100
words, Professor Slobodchikoff claims.
'The little yips prairie dogs make contain a lot of information,' he
said.
Professor Con Slobodchikoff, of Northern Arizona
University
'They can describe details of predators such as their size, shape,
colour and how fast they are going.
'They also can discriminate whether an approaching animal is a coyote
or a dog, and they can decipher different types of birds.'
Professor Slobodchikoff and his students hid themselves in prairie dog
villages and recorded the noises the rodents made whenever a human, hawk, dog or
coyote passed through.
What they found was that the prairie dog issues different calls
depending on the intruder. The researchers discovered this by analysing the
recorded calls for frequency and tone.
They concluded that it doesn't have one call for 'danger', rather it
has a collection of warning noises - or a language.
To further develop this line of investigation, Professor Slobodchikoff
gathered four volunteers and had them walk through a prairie dog village four
times. On each occasion they wore the same clothing, except for different
colour shirts.
The prairie dogs responded by issuing different calls, depending on the
colour of the volunteers' shirts.
Professor Slobodchikoff then discovered they also issued different
calls for varying heights, and even for abstract shapes including cardboard
circles, squares and triangles.
He told NPR: 'Essentially they were saying, "Here comes the tall
human in the blue," versus, "Here comes the short human in the
yellow."'
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