The enjoyment of listening to a story is near universal in humans. Even young children get mesmerized hearing a story. Is that ability only in humans? Are there other animals which seem to enjoy the telling of a tale? Obviously human communication makes it much easier to tell a story, but I suppose other animals could have other ways to communicate.
One scenario I thought about was when primates are taught sign language. Do researchers tell them stories? If so, does it seem like they are interested in them?
Another scenario is the way bees communicate where flowers are. They do a dance which gives directions to where they found pollen. Perhaps they could also do their dance later on as a retelling of when they found a large flower patch.
Are there any instances of that kind of story-like behavior in animals? Where they are not communicating to indicate something in the present (a threat is over there), but rather retelling a memory or creating a fictional story?
Okay, there is this charity that uses therapy dogs in this way: Dog goes into a school/library/hospital accompanied by a human, and once there, in front of an audience of children, the children read a story out loud…to the dog. (Who probably listens attentively, cocking its head when appropriate.) I think it’s called Paws For Reading.
Now I don’t know about your dog, but I think my dog might be up for something like this. He can look very attentive. More so when bacon is involved. He does like for people to talk to him.
I don’t think any animals other than humans are capable of constructing and relaying a narrative. Their communications are all direct with messages like “There’s food this way” or “Predators are coming” or “Give me a toy to play with” or “I like you.” None of those qualifies as a story.
Eh, they can get a bit more nuance than that. A friend’s dog once told his cat “I am capable of destroying you utterly. I choose not to do so at this time, but I can, and if you keep annoying me, I might change my mind”. The cat got the message.
I’m not sure that that constitutes a “story”, though.
I think dogs just respond favorably to the sound of human voices. My golden retriever always looked at the TV when a commercial for a 1-900 “chat line” would come on. The women were of course speaking with pleasing voices.
Same name, but in our city the kids go to the animal shelter and read to the animals in specific cages. Not sure if cats are included or not. But the animals getting attention really need it.
That would be highly counterproductive, since it would cause the other bees to go off looking for flowers where they were before but probably are no longer.
Certainly bees and other insects don’t have the capacity for anything like this.
I guess we’d have to observe the animals to see if they watch the storyteller as it is doing something unusual. Certainly it’s easy to tell with children that they like stories. Even very young children will behave in a different way when a story is read to them. A lot of that depends on language, but animals may be able to relate a stories using their own language.
Like with the bees, maybe after the sun goes down, one of the bees repeats a dance done earlier in the day. The other bees observe the dance with interest and perhap react in some way that’s different from when the dance is first done. So the first bee is retelling the earlier dance and the other bees are remembering.
No proof but I wouldn’t be surprised by some whales liking and telling stories. We don’t know too much about whale song in the end. It might be simple hunting and mating techniques or it may be much more complexed.
One of Niel Gaiman’s Sandman books (#40) discussed a Parliament of Rooks. This is a phenomenon where a circle of rooks form around a single rook. The single rook calls for some time. Then, one of two things happen. Either all the rest of the rooks fly off, or the circle of rooks peck the central rook to death.
The story speculated that the reason for this behavior was that the central rook was a storyteller, and the rest of the rooks were critics.
Animals play fight, but that’s probably as close as they get to understanding the concept of “make believe”. Some animals also seem to have some rudimentary language capabilities like, “The good flowers are towards the Sun at Noon 300 feet from here.” But it’s likely that they wouldn’t be able to go much beyond factual statements.
There is also a program for children to go animals shelters and read books to the dogs. My dog seem to like me singing to him and he doesn’t mind me being off key , he hasn’t barked at me yet. LOL! Reading books to your dogs is a good way to get closer to them . I was told to talk to my hearing dog so we would bond as a team better.
Didn’t know that one. And yes, perfectly fitting.
