Will we ever be able to have a conversation with animals?

It was Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Well some of y’all have been communicating with me for over a decade here, and I’m a cat.

Well, that’s remarkable, but it’s not a conversation.

It’s a thing I see over and over – people want animals to be people. But if you want to communicate with animals, be an animal. Works better.

I mean to say, if you communicate with an animal the way they themselves communicate with each other, you would be amazed what you can both “say” and “hear”.

Also I agree teaching a dog to recognize the discrete sounds for all those plush toys is an extremely primitive conversation. Even for a dog.

:rolleyes: Pussy.

Don’t feel too bad. Your ideas, like a lot of stupid ideas promulgated by K-12 education (complex numbers are too advanced for you! let’s do physics without vectors!), was right up-to-date in some circles in the 19th Century. I blame the diagrams: Once you’ve seen that stupid ascent of man picture, it’s hard to get the idea of ‘evolution as progress’ out of your head. The accident, and it is just an accident, that humans have no living evolutionary relatives closer than chimps can only reinforce that idea.

They should be showing you trees, instead. Phylogenetic trees emphasize the common descent of all life from a single ancestor, the discovery which is the real jewel in the crown of evolutionary biology, and the stupid flood fill algorithm that lies at the heart of how evolution works. I say ‘stupid’ not as an insult but as a simple description: It requires no guidance, no planning, just reproduction, chance, and time. The flood fill from random mutations pruned by selection forces is the essential method by which diversity is produced in the ecosystem.

:smiley:

Doubt it is very normal, animals really can communicate with the person, the key lies in your own how to think, do you think you can communicate with it can communicate with it, you don’t think may be impossible, in the world nothing is absolute:)

Derleth, I understand your desire to demolish ignorance, as it is the sub titular mission statement here. But maybe you could use softer explosives.

It’s true, and important, that evolution doesn’t have a particular end point in mind. But while saying something is “more highly evolved” may be a sort of oxymoron, and have implications that are misleading, it also isn’t completely out of left field.

It is still useful to talk about the relative complexity and comparative features of animals, and so in that colloquial sense we can say that certain animals are “more highly evolved”.

I agree that allowing that can be confusing, but I feel that it is better to adjust than over correct. Perhaps suggesting an alternate phrasing that more accurately reflects what they are getting at is better than just saying they are wrong.

Derleth is correct in absolute terms but “more highly evolved” does make sense when we limit it to a specific characteristic that we get to define.

i.e In terms of intelligence and self-awareness we are as good as it has got (to our knowledge). Apes and cetaceans are a step down compared to us, then some birds perhaps etc. etc. etc.

But those characteristics are only useful evolutionary adaptations in the same way as flight and the ability to withstand intense pressure in abyssal deeps. None is necessarily “better” than the other. None is an ultimate end-point.

Of course it so happens that our particular characteristic (intelligence) means we are now less subject to a purely Darwinian selection process. The same could never be said of swimming, eyesight, flight etc, so perhaps there is a sense in which we are now so highly developed in one dimension that we do need to be considered as something special.

Of course none of the above suggests that there is anything pre-determined about humans being an “end-point”. Minus a global disaster here and there and the most highly intelligent creatures could have sprung from a totally different branch.

Sorry, but I agree totally with Derleth, ‘highly evolved’ is a horribly misleading term that has no place in any discussion about organisms or evolution. There is no term that can be used to replace it, as it’s an expression of an incorrect idea, not just an incorrect term.

Humans, cetaceans or other primates are not biologically more complex or ‘advanced’ than other animals; so no, there is no alternate phrasing that will make that assertion more accurate.

They don’t have anything worthwhile to say.

Seriously, spend an hour conversing with a 3-4 year old, then ratchet down the intellect a couple of orders of magnitude. All you’ll get is verbalization of the same nonverbal conversation you already have with your pet.

“I want food”
“Pet me”
“I have to pee”
“Look, a squirrel!”

I dunno about that. Our pets (well dogs and cats) tend to die before they can have the chance (remote as it might be) to grow their vocabulary and increase their understanding. [Anecdote Warning]My black lab once (when he was about 10 years old) got very indignant when I called him an asshole. A year later he was gone. IMNSHO they are capable of picking up a lot during their lifetimes-give them human lifetimes and they might be capable of a lot more.

Please define “communicate”.

#2

I think the issue is not so much whether or not there is communication between humans and certain animals, for there is, but rather the scope of what is communicated. I think Cheesesteal nailed it in one.

I have observed communication between wild birds that looks a lot like simple language. Ravens call to each other over distances with a variety of sounds in a pattern that reminds me a lot of simple human speech. More than just ‘food’ ‘danger’ ‘prey’ etc, some calls sound distinctly emotive as well as tactical. Whiskey-jacks are have a multitude of vocalizations directed at both each other as well as humans that they are trying to coax some lunch out of. One was quite obviously offering me a frozen mouse once in exchange for my sandwich, admittedly mostly with body language, but still very directed communication.

Coyotes call to each other not just to communicate location but to coordinate while stalking.

So what? If you mean “more intelligent,” write “more intelligent,” not “more evolved.”

Derleth is right. Saying humans are more evolved than, say, cheetahs we use language and they do not is exactly as silly as saying cheetahs are more evolved than we are because they can sprint far faster than we can.

I would, others are less clear with their language. They mean the former but express it by saying the latter. I don’t get too steamed up about it.

If they baldy claim man is “more evolved” I will join you correcting them (I’d be fairly gentle though). If they say that our intelligence is “more highly evolved” then even though it is rather clumsy and inexact language I wouldn’t shoot them down. After all, how else would it have reached those heights other than by evolution?

Cute.

But I ask the question because I want to be clear on exactly what Susie1017 means when she uses the word.

I can barely understand what you’re trying to communicate, and you’re (ostensibly) human.

The answer, right now is, “no one knows.”

An educated opinion would be, “very doubtful.”

Your opinion is, you feel your doggy-woggy feel sad when your sad and understands you when you say “go for a walk!?”. This is just anthropomorphism on top of wishful thinking.

It doesn’t change what may or may not be possible.