I’m mainly thinking about animals that have a more developed form of communication.
Would a dolphin in one ocean be able to “speak” with a dolphin from another? What about whales from different regions? (Can different species of whales communicate with each othe,r for that matter?)
What about dog barks? Do they mean the same in America as they do in Japan?
Honeybees communicate the location of pollen by doing a little bee-dance. Are they the same world wide?
If it’s all the same, why? Why wouldn’t different groups come up with different languages if they are separated from each other. I’d think instinct only goes so far.
Among birds, where vocal communication is extremely important, geographical dialects are very common and in some cases may serve to restrict gene flow. Just for example and to quote my, late great ornithology professor, an expert on the phenomena:
The White-crowned Sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys, shows distinct dialects in different geographical populations in the San Francisco Bay region ( Marler and Tamura, 1964; Baptista, 1975 ), and in various parts of North America ( Baptista, 1977; Baptista and King, 1980 ). At boundaries between the two dialects, individuals may be “bilingual”, singing two dialects.
From The Life of Birds, fourth edition, by Welty and Baptista ( 1988, W.B. Saunders ).
These dialects are apparently acquired from the “community”, as transplanted birds will adopt the local dialect, rather than sticking with that of their fathers ( and bilingual birds will sometimes drop the less heard dialect to concentrate on the larger population in their area ).
Killer whales, at least, use different dialects in different pods (herds). However, I expect that these are similar enough that whales with different dialects can “understand” one another.
The examples cited so far pertain to animals with very complex communication systems. Birds and whales have more to say than, for example, dogs - a lot of animals simply don’t have enough complexity in their communication for the issue to really come up.
Humpback whales seem to show definite dialects, which are described as “cultural” (which I presume means they are learned; and not hard-wired in, with different populations simply having different whale-song genes).
To continue along the ‘duck’ tangent…
English ducks say quack quack, whereas their French cousins say coin coin and in Estonia prääks prääks.
cite.
Ok, that wasn’t the question, but I still find it interresting that different cultures have come up with so different words, when the basic sound they try to immitate are (mostly) similar.
My nephew, a K-9 police dog handler, speaks only German when the dog is on duty. When the dog is off duty, and at home with him, he is spoken to in English only. So, if he commands…in English…to ‘GET HIS CROTCH!”the dog will wag it’s tail. If repeated in German, ya better cross your legs real quick. Just wanted to toss that in here. Dogs can understand different languages.
Er, no … a dog will just think it’s a different sentence in the same language. You could just as easily train a dog to think “quack like a duck” to mean “get his crotch”.
In the same vein, a dog raised exclusively by a German speaking family, brings the dog to America to meet American cousin Adolph. Adolph says any number of commands to the dog, and the dog just looks at him as if he were stupid. So, my point is, that the dog is responding to the spoken word. Sit, rollover, whatever. If the command is repeated in a ‘foreign ‘ language, you are going to get a blank stare, no?
.
