Animal Communication | Short Exam Notes

ANIMALS CONVEY VARIOUS MESSAGES

• feelings
• warnings
• desire / willingness to mate
• locations of food sources

HONEY BEE DANCE

• Dance to communicate.
• Dance communicates distance and food.
• Not entirely arbitrary.

BIRD CALLS

• Message about surroundings.
• Territorial purposes.
• Mating purposes.

DOGS

• Learn to understand commands.
• Communicating the primary drives.
• Wagging the tail.

General

• Calls are species-dependent.
• Lack displacement - (here and now)
• Lack productivity.
• Primates are physically unable to produce human speech sounds.
• Known to use communicative gestures in the wild.
• Modern studies show that primates rely on sign language and other visual systems.
• Mainly, stimulus behaviour to sound. They do not understand the meaning.