Animal Mimicry

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is John Zirania, and I am calling from Big South Fork National Rec Area in north-central Tennessee.

Oh, yes, Big South Fork. Welcome.

I have a question about the evolution of language in humans and the evolution of language in animals.

A long time ago, I’m a pilot.

A long time ago when I was building my career, I was flying a little freight plane out in Burlington, Vermont.

And I was staying on a farm, and on this farm they had ducks and geese.

And when I’d come home, I’d observe that when the ducks were near these geese, the ducks would honk like the geese.

And when the ducks were more than, say, 30, 40, 50 feet away from these geese, they would quack like ducks.

And initially I thought I was losing my mind.

So I had my fiancée at the time come on over and visit with me, and she noticed the same thing.

So my question is, are there bilingual ducks?

And how did language evolve?

Is there a continuum in language from animals to humans?

Wow, that’s a big question.

Let’s break this down. And I kind of want to take the language evolution out of it because that’s not what is really happening here.

It is just the natural ability to learn that animals have, just like humans have.

It’s a little more primitive than ours, but they do do it.

There have been scientific studies where they have trained birds of one species to use the alarm signals of another bird species to run for their lives, to hide or flee when they believe there’s danger.

And it was a pretty decent study where they had like a fake predator flying overhead numerous times.

And then species A made their alarm call and species B heard it.

And then in the future, they kind of recreated this experiment and discovered those birds would indeed hide most of them.

And we also have seen information where monkeys can learn to recognize bird signals as warnings.

You know, there’s a predator nearby.

So there’s really consistent scientific data that show that animals can learn from other animals.

But they’re not picking it up as language.

They are picking it up the same way that you might say, I have noticed that when there is lightning in the sky, rain soon follows.

It’s that sort of knowledge where you’re seeing a series of events and learning through practice that something is about to happen.

So they’re not saying, oh, now I can speak vervet monkey.

It’s nothing like that at all.

I’ve seen studies about that involving killer whales and dolphins in captivity as well.

Yeah.

But just give them the credit for learning the signals of another species.

And that’s kind of cool and on its own, right, John?

So they’re not exactly…

Oh, yeah, that’s amazing.

Yeah.

For a duck, especially.

Yeah, so we’re not talking bilingual ducks.

No, not really.

Now, there’s nothing to say that certain species of birds that have mimicry as part of their life, like the mockingbirds, for example, can learn the calls of other birds.

But there’s not a lot of evidence that they’re using that for any other reason than just to attract the mate of their own species, not necessarily the mates of another species.

That’s interesting.

So when the ducks were honking like geese, they were still trying to attract other ducks, even though they were using goose calls.

I don’t know about that particular circumstance, but they were hanging out with geese, so they were behaving like geese.

I mean, you can sometimes see cats that are raised with puppy litters behave a little like a puppy because that’s normal to them.

So some things that we learn as animals, some humans or animals, are hardwired, and some things are learned from our environment.

So I’m not surprised that ducks and geese should start to interact.

They’re incredibly similar species with similar needs and similar wants.

Yeah, you know, I have an example that goes beyond that, too, again involving ducks, but then with goats.

I raise goats, chickens, and I’ve got some ducks on my property.

And actually, I have a goat that can call to a duck.

And when a goat makes a specific bleep, and I’m not going to try to imitate the bleep, the duck comes running.

Nice.

That’s also pretty fascinating.

What?

Yeah, it’s a nice explanation.

But again, it’s not language, though, right?

It’s Pavlovian almost.

Yeah, it’s trained behavior more than it is like the natural ability to acquire the language of another species.

Yeah, I’m not going to knock it.

That’s how I communicate half the time.

That’s outstanding, my friend.

All right, so I hope we’ve helped a little bit in answering your questions.

That was extremely helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it, John.

Take care now.

All right.

I appreciate your time.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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