Animals communicate with each other, and sometimes with us. But that’s where the similarity between animals and us ends, as Jason Goldman explains.
When Alex unexpectedly(скоропостижно) passed away(скончался) after only thirty-one years of life, his last words to his dearest friend were, "You be good. See you tomorrow. I love you." A touching sentiment indeed, but all the more impressive because Alex was an African Grey Parrot. Over the course of thirty years of work between psychologist Irene Pepperberg and Alex, purchased from a Chicago pet store at one year of age, the parrot amassed a vocabulary of some 150 words. According to one report, he was able to recognize fifty different objects, could count(подсчитать) quantities up to six, and could distinguish(различить) among seven colours and five shapes. He also understood the ideas of "bigger" and "smaller", and "same" and "different".
Alex isn’t the only non-human to display such talents. Kanzi is a 31-year-old male bonobo who lives in a small social group with others of his species at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa. Bonobos, together with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives. After years of working with primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi can now understand several thousand words, and can communicate using a kind of keyboard that contains around 400 visual symbols called lexigrams.
Then there's Rico, a border collie who knows the labels(этикетки) of around 200 different items, and can retrieve(взять,выбрать) them on command. Compared to Alex and Kanzi, this might not seem particularly impressive or interesting. However, Rico can learn the label of an item that he's never seen before after only hearing the word once. If there are 20 items in front of him, 19 of which he already knows the labels for, and he is instructed to retrieve an item using a word he had never heard before, Rico can infer(сделать вывод) that the unfamiliar item matches with the unfamiliar word. Weeks later, he still remembers the pairing. This process of word-learning, called fast-mapping, is identical to the process through which young children learn new words.
Not to be outdone(не желая отставать) by the feathered(пернатого) or furry(пушистого), there’s the female Atlantic bottlenose dolphins Akeakamai and Phoenix who lived at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii. A famous paper by marine biologist Louis Herman and colleagues in 1984 described Akeakamai and Phoenix's abilities to understand sentences in visual or acoustic artificial languages.
The researchers gave the dolphins instructions constructed entirely(полностью) of familiar words, but in various combinations that would only be understood by knowing the grammar of the sentences, not just the vocabulary. For example, "Phoenix Akeakamai Over" was an instruction for Phoenix to swim to Akeakamai and jump over her, while "Akeakamai Surfboard Fetch Speaker" instructed Akeakamai to get the surfboard and bring it to the speaker. In each case the dolphin had to interpret the verb "over" or "fetch" according to the noun: did "fetch"(выбрать) apply to the surfboard or to the speaker, for instance(например)?
Language barrier
Primates, birds, cetaceans, dogs and other species have proven able, through extensive training, to understand human words and simple sentences. And as Ed Yong explained, in some exceptional cases, such as Kanzi and Alex, they've even been able to engage in two-way communication with humans.
However, language is more than a process through which meaning is attached(придается) to words or short sentences. Language might be described as the ability to take a finite set of elements(конечное множество элементов) (such as words), and using a set(набор) of rules (grammar and syntax) to create infinite(бесонечных) combinations, each of which is comprehensible(понятной). Given this definition(определение), it is perhaps not surprising then that cognitive psychologists sometimes speak of a "grammar of action".
Like sentences, the catalogue of human actions is infinite. We stretch, bend, and kick. We build bridges and prepare meals. We perform an endless variety of dance routines. We make paper airplanes. A complex action, like hammering a nail(забивание гвоздя), can be broken down into its constituent(составляющие) actions – grasping(захватывание), striking, reaching(достижение) – just as a sentence can be broken into its units(подразделения) – nouns, verbs, adjectives. In 1951, cognitive psychologist Karl Lashley proposed a link between language and action. "Not only speech,” he wrote, “but all skilled acts seem to involve(включает) the same problems of serial ordering(последовательного упорядочения), even down to the temporal(временной) coordination of muscular contractions in such a movement as reaching and grasping." Just as a stream of speech(поток речи,цельные фразы) does not contain explicit(четких) pauses between words, fluid actions like nail hammering do not contain breaks between their components. Yet (тем не менее) humans effortlessly parse(легко анализируют) speech streams and action sequences into their parts.
What is language, then, if it can describe the way we process actions as well as the way we manipulate words? Understand from this perspective, language is not a method of communication, per se(как такового), but a rather method of computation(расчета). Other animals clearly communicate with one another, sometimes in fairly elaborate(сложных) ways. Whale(киты) sing, monkeys howl, birds chirp. Lizards bob their heads up and down to communicate, and some squid(кальмары) do it by regulating the colouration of their skin cells. But none of these processes can be explained by language.
What makes human language unique is not that it allows us to communicate with each other, but that it allows us to do so with infinite variety. A monkey can scream to warn its troopmates of an approaching predator, or alert(предупредить) them to a cache of tasty food, but it can't communicate something like "doesn't that hawk(ястреб) have a funny looking beak(клюв)?" or "with a little salt, this fig(рис) would taste divine(божественным)". It certainly can't create nonsensical(бессмысленные) yet understandable sentences like “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously(яростно)”.
No, only humans can utter(произнести) that sort of grammatical nonsense.
I think that it's a very interesting article. These animals is very clever and sometimes funny. My friend has two parrots, Kesha and Manya. She often tells me about the cases occurring to her parrots. These stories are amusing.
I think all of you in the childhood dreamed about the pet, which could talk. I truly wanted one from the cartoon, the dog who would have the ability to talk to me! Fortunately, now I understand that dogs can't speak just bark ! Even if some of you, after reading this title have a hope that some morning you'll wake up and your pet will say "Good Morning, what would you like for breakfast?" - forget! Animals don't use their tongues and lips very well, and that makes it difficult for them to match many of the sounds that their human make. All cats and dogs, which you can watch on YouTube have some vocal skills (their masters spent hours to get them to imitate simple words). No more. There is no magic ! If you love you pet, stop torturing it! Live your life and communicate with people around you! Animals are animals! They will never replace a person alive! PS: to make your desire real, ask for it Santa Clause! He can fulfill everything, i checked;))
Thanks for the advice about Santa Claus) I still don't give up and every new year I ask him new desires And you may not believe me, but desires will become true)) Our animals are our friends. And the better you understand each other, the easier you can communicate, though in different languages.
I often think:do animals understand our speech? People often talk with animals but we do not believe that they understand us. I think that my rat understands some of my words. He responds to his name, keeps silent when you raise voice,runs to you when you call him. I believe that animals understand us partially. It is a miracle)
I had a parrot,too.It was a very clever bird.It could say different words.For example,it called me by name.Say that only male parrots can speak.Do you think this is true ?
These birds are very clever animals!!!They do not stop amazing us!!!When i was a child, i had a parrot too. He could speak different funny worlds. But unfortunately, my cat ate him!!! It was trouble for me. Hevertheless, parrots are clever and sometimes they can deceive their enemy.
"You be good. See you tomorrow. I love you." It's so touching I read this article with a big pleasure. I had a budgie 4 years ago. We bought it with an idea to teach it speaking It was so clever.
I found this text by accident. At first it seemed to me boring, but then I read stories about these wonderful animals, and became interested in all story. I think animals are not more stupid than people. Animals do not complicate their speech and thoughts as humans. But who knows, they may also complicate things, only in their own language :)
Who is Alex? What had happened with Alex? Who is Rico and what had happened with him? What unusual things were these animals able to learn? Is language unique to humans?
! Even if some of you, after reading this title have a hope that some morning you'll wake up and your pet will say "Good Morning, what would you like for breakfast?" - forget! Animals don't use their tongues and lips very well, and that makes it difficult for them to match many of the sounds that their human make. All cats and dogs, which you can watch on YouTube have some vocal skills (their masters spent hours to get them to imitate simple words). No more. There is no magic ! 
And you may not believe me, but desires will become true)) 
