במדבר 22: 28–30
וַיִּפְתַּח יְהֹוָה אֶת־פִּי הָאָתוֹן וַתֹּאמֶר לְבִלְעָם מֶה־עָשִׂיתִי לְךָ כִּי הִכִּיתַנִי זֶה שָׁלֹשׁ רְגָלִים׃ וַיֹּאמֶר בִּלְעָם לָאָתוֹן כִּי הִתְעַלַּלְתְּ בִּי לוּ יֶשׁ־חֶרֶב בְּיָדִי כִּי עַתָּה הֲרַגְתִּיךְ׃ וַתֹּאמֶר הָאָתוֹן אֶל־בִּלְעָם הֲלוֹא אָנֹכִי אֲתֹנְךָ אֲשֶׁר־רָכַבְתָּ עָלַי מֵעוֹדְךָ עַד־הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה הַהַסְכֵּן הִסְכַּנְתִּי לַעֲשׂוֹת לְךָ כֹּה וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא׃
Then the LORD opened the ass’s mouth, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times?” Balaam said to the ass, “You have made a mockery of me! If I had a sword with me, I’d kill you.” The ass said to Balaam, “Look, I am the ass that you have been riding all along until this day! Have I been in the habit of doing thus to you?” And he answered, “No.”
Once upon a time, we thought we were special. We were not animals. We were human beings, endowed with all kinds of qualities that animals did not and could not possess. We had free choice, and they acted as automatons. We had language, and they had meaningless grunting. We had a sense of justice, and they were savages. We could feel pain, and they could not.
The silly notion that animals do not feel pain is widely thought to have originated with the French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). "They eat without pleasure, cry without pain, grow without knowing it; they desire nothing, fear nothing, know nothing". While these words were those a student of Descartes, the contemporary philosopher Peter Harrison notes that they are generally thought to capture the essence of Descartes' view of animals. "The father of modern philosophy" continues Harrison, "is credited with the opinion that animals are non-sentient automata, an opinion for which over the centuries he has been ridiculed and vilified."
Once we stopped declaring and started exploring, it became clear that we were far more like the (other) animals than we had once thought. Yes, they felt pain (even fish, as we have described elsewhere). Of course as anyone who has owned a dog will know, they certainly display emotions: happiness, boredom and even guilt. The eminent primatologist Jan van Hoof visited Mama, a chimpanzee he had known for forty years, as she neared the end of her life. Weak and listless, watch her reaction as she slowly recognizes her old human friend. Animals don’t have emotions? What nonesense. (And by the way, pigs emotionally respond to music.)
““You are the very first man to talk like us. Oh, sometimes people annoy me dreadfully - such airs they put on, talking about ‘the dumb animals. ‘ Dumb! Huh! Why I knew a macaw once who could say ‘Good morning’ in seven different ways.” ”
But do animals use language? Of course they do.
The Sophisticated Language of Animal Communication
Animal communication, once thought to be simplistic and purely instinctual, has emerged as a field revealing profound complexities and sophisticated structures akin to human language.
Primates
Primates, our closest evolutionary relatives with whom we share about 99% of our DNA, exhibit some of the most intricate communication systems. Chimpanzees and bonobos use a combination of vocalizations, gestures, and facial expressions to convey information. Studies on chimpanzees have shown that their gestures are intentional and often goal-directed, and resemble the pragmatic use of gestures in human conversation. Bonobos use a variety of vocalizations to maintain social bonds and coordinate group activities, while vervet monkeys have specific alarm calls for different predators, such as leopards, eagles, and snakes. Each call triggers an appropriate escape response from other monkeys, demonstrating an understanding of what are called referential signals. This referential communication, akin to the use of words in human language, highlights the capacity for abstract representation and context-specific responses in animals.
Birds
Bird song is not just a series of beautiful sounds (though it is certainly that too). The syntax of bird songs, like for example the Bengalese finch, demonstrates structured sequences that follow specific rules, akin to the grammar in human languages. And these songs serve multiple purposes: attracting mates, defending territories, and even teaching young birds. And what about Alex, that really clever African Grey parrot you may recall having once heard about? A 2019 review with the delightful title Who’s a clever bird now? A brief history of parrot cognition published a couple of years summed up his language abilities:
Pepperberg and her students proceeded training Alex in the 1970s… Their studies on Alex spanned over three decades until his death in 2007 and produced some of the best results of human language experiments on animals: Alex learned over 100 words, could label and categorize unknown objects , developed concepts such as ‘same’ versus ‘different’, ‘bigger’ versus ‘smaller’, could count up to eight, add and subtract numbers and was learning Arabic numbers as well the alphabet.
Whales and Dolphins
Although you know this, it is worth saying that cetaceans, including dolphins and whales, exhibit remarkable communication abilities. Dolphins use a series of clicks, whistles, and body postures to convey detailed information about their environment and social structure. Each dolphin has a unique signature whistle that functions similarly to a human name, allowing individual recognition and social cohesion. Whales, like the humpback produce long, complex songs that can travel vast distances underwater. These songs exhibit hierarchical structures, with phrases and themes that can change over time, which suggests a form of cultural transmission and learning. And just a few months ago, there was a report in the prestigious journal Nature Communications which revealed that whales are using use a much richer set of sounds than previously known. The researchers called it the “sperm whale phonetic alphabet.”
Our results demonstrate that sperm whale vocalisations form a complex combinatorial communication system: the seemingly arbitrary inventory of coda types can be explained by combinations of rhythm, tempo, rubato, and ornamentation features. Sizable combinatorial vocalisation systems are exceedingly rare in nature; however, their use by sperm whales shows that they are not uniquely human, and can arise from dramatically different physiological, ecological, and social pressures.
“These findings also offer steps towards understanding how sperm whales transmit meaning...one of the key differentiators between human communication and all known animal communication systems is duality of patterning: a base set of individually meaningless elements that are sequenced to generate a very large space of meanings. The existence of a combinatorial coding system-at either the level of sounds, sound sequences, or both-is a prerequisite for duality of patterning. Our findings open up the possibility that sperm whale communication might provide our first example of that phenomenon in another species.
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The Dance Language of Bees
Even insects, often perceived as having limited cognitive abilities, demonstrate sophisticated communication methods. The waggle dance of honeybees is a prime example. This dance, performed by foraging bees, conveys precise information about the direction and distance of food sources relative to the hive. The dance language of bees is not only spatially accurate but also adaptable to environmental changes, showcasing a remarkable level of behavioral flexibility. (And, coincidentally, I have just finished reading this wonderful book on the discovery of that waggle dance by an assimilated German Jew named Karl von Frisch, who won the Nobel Prize for his work.)
But what about talking to the animals?
Balaam’s donkey did not just communicate with other donkeys. She also chatted with Balaam. So what do we know about cross-species communication? Well, as we mentioned, Alex the parrot could communicate with humans. Take a look at this clip and marvel at how we can talk to birds.
Let’s end with another picture worth a thousand words. Here is clip starring Washoe and Koko, two primates who were taught to use sign language - and who then created their own signs for words they had not been taught. Of course animals can talk. How silly to think otherwise.
And now, here is a topic for your Shabbat dinner conversation. Having read this post, do you agree with the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks when he said this:?
““Biologically we may be part of the primate family, close cousins of the apes. Ecclesiastes, we recall, said as much: ‘Man has no pre-eminence over the animals.’ But humans remain unique. We are culture-producing animals. There are other social animals, but none that produce – except at the most rudimentary level – cultures, symbols, systems of meaning. It is this that gives us our unique adaptability. Other animals are genetically conditioned to act in certain ways under certain conditions. We have something more powerful than genetically encoded instinct. We are culture-producing, information-sharing, meaning-learning animals. Nature built us for culture. No animal painted the bonobo equivalent of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. No animal said, ‘To be or not to be.’ No animal philosophised that he or she might be nothing more than a hairy human. No animal was even an atheist, as far as I know. We may share many of our genes with the primates, as we do with fruit flies, bananas and yeast. The stones of an ancient cottage have mineral similarities to those out of which Chartres Cathedral was built. But there the resemblance ends.””
