Animal communication

Let's talk a little bit about animal communication. In general, communication is one party giving information to another party somehow. It doesn't even have to be one to one; it could be one person giving or one animal—if we're talking about animal communication—giving information to many other animals. Communication doesn't even just have to happen between animals. A plant can actually communicate to an animal through its appearance or by releasing certain chemicals, but we'll focus in this video on animal communication.

It's interesting because even we humans are animals. The more that we think about this, the more types of communication we'll see around us. It’ll be interesting to think about why we do that communication and how we do it. So, let's think about the types of animal communication.

We can think of visual communication. Just me drawing a diagram like that is a form of visual communication. We could have things like pictures, diagrams, writing. Writing is interesting because it's conveying kind of thought ideas. It is conveying information, and it's something you look at. So, I would put writing here.

You have even more basic types of visual communication. Even if we stick to human beings, the most obvious one I can think of is facial expressions. If you see someone who has a smile like that and you know they seem very approachable, it feels like, "Hey, they're communicating," even if they're not consciously doing it. Then, "Hey, you can approach me. I'm friendly. Why don't you come talk to me? We can hang out."

While if someone looks like this, where they're kind of glaring, you might say, "Okay, this person doesn't look like they want to be bothered right now. Maybe I'm not interested in messing with that person." When you think about facial expressions, it's very fundamental for us human beings, but why do we view this one on the left as more friendly and this one on the right as more aggressive?

Through millions of years of evolution, these things just came about, and we recognize kind of an aggressive posture or a friendly posture in our own species and in other species as well. We know when a dog is showing its teeth, that okay, maybe I don't want to mess with it as much, but if it's wagging its tail, okay, maybe it's in a friendly mood.

Similarly, it's not just pictures and diagrams and writing and facial expressions; it could be body postures. This is true of humans; it's also true of other animals. There's a whole TED talk on these power poses—these poses that you can take on that can establish your dominance in an environment, especially with other humans. But it's probably not just humans. Also, with other animals, you'll also see if you watch these nature specials on TV, animals striking certain poses that exhibit their dominance in some way or their position in some type of a social hierarchy.

You also have animals, just by the nature of their appearance, that are communicating with other animals. For example, there are a lot of animals that, by their coloration, are signaling to other animals that, "Hey, it's probably not a good idea to eat me." For example, if this is a frog right over here—it's not that well drawn of a frog—but frogs are famous, especially some of the ones that have these vibrant colors. These are signals to other potential predators that, "Hey, you don't want to eat me. I am poisonous. I will likely make you sick or even kill you if you eat me."

The predators know that; it could either be innate through millions of years of evolution—the ones that have learned to avoid the colors live on and pass their genes—or it might be sometimes some type of learned behavior that they tried to eat one of these frogs once and it made them really sick, so they're going to avoid it again.

As we know, visual isn't the only type of communication. In fact, normally when we talk about communications, we often think of speech and language, or spoken language. So I'll write that down—auditory communication. That could be speech; it could be some type of a bark. A dog barking, saying, "Hey, stay away from here. Don't mess with me." It could be a roar. A lion's roar might be a way of saying, "Hey, I am dominant here. Don't come here," or if you're a potential mate, if you're a lioness, saying, "Hey, look how nice my roar is. Wouldn't you want to come and start a family with me?"

It doesn't even have to be something that comes from your throat; it could be beating of the chest by a gorilla, once again to exert its dominance in some way. It could be some sound that an animal makes as a warning to other animals to run away because it sees a predator. We can keep thinking of more and more examples of each of these forms of communication.

Now, other forms of communication that might be a little bit less obvious include chemical communication. What's an example of chemical communication? Well, we know that a lot of animals, including dogs, like to mark their territory with urine. When other animals come by, especially other dogs, they'll smell that urine that might have been applied to a tree someplace. That says, "Okay, this is some other dog's territory. I'm going to go someplace else."

There are things like pheromones. Let me write this down—pheromones. Pheromones are chemical signals. Even humans emit pheromones that are not necessarily consciously, but subconsciously sensed by other humans. They can drive attraction between those humans. Once again, it's chemical signals—one animal is giving information to another.

Now, another form of communication, once again not as obvious, is tactile communication. This could be a form of a kind of nurturing touch by the mother to communicate to the child that it is safe. It could be a warning. You could imagine you're at a dinner party and your significant other kind of steps on your toe when you find yourself saying things that you shouldn't say. That's all tactile communication—hey, don't you know I'm giving you the information that you're starting to talk about something that you're not supposed to talk about?

Now that we've talked about some of these general forms of communication, I encourage you to just look around either your own life or just the animal world and think about all the forms of communication around you. Let's think about why animals actually communicate, including humans.

We often think of ourselves as somehow beyond the natural world, but when you really think about it, most of our forms of communication fall into the categories we're about to talk about. One category is coordinate group behavior. For example, if we are about to go fight in a war, there might be communication about, "Well, how do we approach the enemy? In what order do we do it?"

It could be a team where we make a plan—either visual or auditory plan somehow. I don't know how you could actually do a chemical plan, but that would be interesting. There are other things: you could be caring for the young as your main purpose for communication.

Care for young, once again, it could be something like tactile or even visual communication or auditory communication that makes the young feel nurtured, or you might be training them in some way. In fact, even this video, even the whole notion of Khan Academy, is a form of communication that you could argue is about coordinating group behavior in some way—helping to educate more people so that they can participate in a better way.

Or you could view it as caring for the young or some combination. But there are other reasons why you communicate. You could be defending territory; you could be just a new color. You could be defending territory. Obviously, something like a no trespassing sign does it very explicitly. In fact, even a fence, the existence of a fence, is a form of communication.

In the animal world, we can think of it all the time with a bark or by leaving your chemical signature on a tree to say, "Hey, this is... Don't come here; this is my territory." A very big role or use of communication that you'll see throughout the animal world, even in humans, if you really think about it, is in finding a mate.

In finding a mate, you know, when someone goes and buys that fancy sports car, it's probably more than they need just to get from point A to point B. But it might signal something to potential mates that, "Hey, I have a lot of earning power," or "I'm flashy," or whatever else it might be. Related to that, you might want to signal some type of dominance, and that dominance might be for a potential mate, or it might be to defend your territory, tell other people to step aside, or that, "Hey, you should be the one that's coordinating the group's behavior instead of someone else."