Animal Behavior Exam 3 – Study Guide, Key Concepts and Practice Review
Characteristics of Animal Communication according to S. Pinker (linguist_ - ✔✔- finite
repertory of calls (unlike humans)
- continuous analog signal that registers magnitude of some state (bearing teeth = about to be
aggressive)
- a series of random variations on a theme
Animal "Language": Honeybees - ✔✔Dance language is symbolic in that it transfers info about
true direction relative to sun.
Arbitrary signals
Alarm Calls: Incidental - ✔✔Most of the time, alarm calls are intentional, but sometimes things
seem like alarm calls but aren't really
Lots of animals give signals or cue that warn others about the presence of predators.
•Usually these signals cause a state of increased alertness, offer directional information, and
result in avoidance behavior of others.
•Some are quite simple. When a frog is startled by a predator is makes a sound as it leaps into
the water.
This alarm call can warn others, but it might just result from the frog expelling air from its lungs
so it can more quickly submerge
Alarm Calls: Intentional - ✔✔There are few cases in which animals actively deceive others with
communication signals.
,•Sometimes animals deceptively use alarm calls. Like drongos who fake calls. The other species
will drop the prey items, but they aren't fooled again. Then, the drongo picks another alarm call.
There appears to be intentionality and they are deceptively using these alarm calls.
Theory of Mind - ✔✔individual has perception that others can understand them and vice
versa.
Alarm Calls: words - ✔✔•Most alarm calls mean watch out!
•Even though drongos use different alarm calls, mimicking different species, they all say the
same thing --watch out!
•In other cases, it is been suggested that different alarm calls can have different meanings. . .
are they words?
Alarm Calls: Referential - ✔✔•Predator alarm calls usually mean just that and no more-a
predator is about.
•Vervet monkeys produce different alarm calls for different predators, and receivers respond
accordingly.
•Playbacks were needed to show that it was the alarm call and not the context of the alarm call
that elicited the appropriate behavior.
•The assignment of the call to the predator is arbitrary, and thus symbolic, but that term has
been abandoned for referential or functionally referential.
Not an innate behavior, sometimes juveniles don't know what to do. Juveniles have to learn
association between behavior and alarm call.
-Needs to be intentional to be referential
- When a vervet was on its own (no audience), it would still make an alarm song. Suggesting
that this isn't referential, because they still made the call.
Alarm Calls: Syntax - ✔✔Syntax refers to the rules of ordering words within a sentence to
achieve a different meaning
,•In bird songs and many other systems, there is a specific order to signal components, and
interfering with that order disrupts communication function but it does not change the
"meaning", i.e. the response of the receiver to the signal.
•A recent example suggests that there might be syntactic communication in animals.
•Campbell's monkeys also produce alarm calls in response to predators and other disturbances.
- 6 alarm call types given in different contexts. can add things on to give different meaning -->
like speech
Human Language vs. Primate Communication - ✔✔•Male Campbell's monkeys are limited to a
relatively small range of messages that they can convey to their audience.
•This is partly because callers do not take full advantage of the potential of their communicative
system. For example, they do not inverse the order of calls (e.g., AB to BA) to generate
differences in meaning.
•Human language is symbolic in the sense that signalers can inform listeners about referents
that are not physically present.
•Campbell's monkeys only call in response to real life experiences, and some observations
suggest that callers did not attempt to inform others.
Human Language + The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test - ✔✔Tom Wolfe - wrote about Electric Kool-
aid Acid Test and the boom "The Right Stuff", and then wrote "Bonfire of the Vanities" (Excesses
on wall street degrading culture). What evidence do we have the human language evolved from
animal communication or did human language evolve spontaneously on its own. Special
creation is the only thing that can explain human language. Point is, not suggesting that
language didn't evolve, suggesting it's not an offshoot of other animal communication.
Characteristics of Language (Faculty) according to Chomsky - ✔✔•Language is by far the most
unique of human traits.
•Humans but not other species have a language organ designed to carry out combinatorial
calculations.
•The combinatorial machinery is a preadaptation for language.
, •There is a generative grammar (not a formal grammar) that provides a single set of rules that
generates all sentences.
•The universal grammar is innate and is shared by all humans using all languages.
General Attributes of Human Language - ✔✔•Symbolic
-arbitrary association of meaning with word, even in the absence the object being considered.
•Generative grammar-a set of innately specified (syntactic) rules:
Dog bites man is not news while
Man bites dog is news.
Syntax in language ^
•Recursive
-rules work at different levels (combine words in phrases, phrases in sentences, etc.).
•Combinatorial
-combines words in an infinite number of sets. There is no such things as the world's longest
sentence.
General Attributes of Human Language - Animal Kingdom - ✔✔•The animal kingdom has been
designed on the basis of highly conserved developmental systems that read an almost universal
language coded in DNA base pairs.
•This system is shown on the left in terms of a phylogenetic tree. In contrast, animals lack a
common universal code of communication, indicated on the right by unconnected animal
groups.
Evolution - ✔✔•The fact that human language is unique to our species does not mean there is
no evolution to study.
•There can be progenitorsto human language.
•Chomsky has often rejected natural selection as offering any insight into human language.
•A review of language evolution suggests differently.
Characteristics of Animal Communication according to S. Pinker (linguist_ - ✔✔- finite
repertory of calls (unlike humans)
- continuous analog signal that registers magnitude of some state (bearing teeth = about to be
aggressive)
- a series of random variations on a theme
Animal "Language": Honeybees - ✔✔Dance language is symbolic in that it transfers info about
true direction relative to sun.
Arbitrary signals
Alarm Calls: Incidental - ✔✔Most of the time, alarm calls are intentional, but sometimes things
seem like alarm calls but aren't really
Lots of animals give signals or cue that warn others about the presence of predators.
•Usually these signals cause a state of increased alertness, offer directional information, and
result in avoidance behavior of others.
•Some are quite simple. When a frog is startled by a predator is makes a sound as it leaps into
the water.
This alarm call can warn others, but it might just result from the frog expelling air from its lungs
so it can more quickly submerge
Alarm Calls: Intentional - ✔✔There are few cases in which animals actively deceive others with
communication signals.
,•Sometimes animals deceptively use alarm calls. Like drongos who fake calls. The other species
will drop the prey items, but they aren't fooled again. Then, the drongo picks another alarm call.
There appears to be intentionality and they are deceptively using these alarm calls.
Theory of Mind - ✔✔individual has perception that others can understand them and vice
versa.
Alarm Calls: words - ✔✔•Most alarm calls mean watch out!
•Even though drongos use different alarm calls, mimicking different species, they all say the
same thing --watch out!
•In other cases, it is been suggested that different alarm calls can have different meanings. . .
are they words?
Alarm Calls: Referential - ✔✔•Predator alarm calls usually mean just that and no more-a
predator is about.
•Vervet monkeys produce different alarm calls for different predators, and receivers respond
accordingly.
•Playbacks were needed to show that it was the alarm call and not the context of the alarm call
that elicited the appropriate behavior.
•The assignment of the call to the predator is arbitrary, and thus symbolic, but that term has
been abandoned for referential or functionally referential.
Not an innate behavior, sometimes juveniles don't know what to do. Juveniles have to learn
association between behavior and alarm call.
-Needs to be intentional to be referential
- When a vervet was on its own (no audience), it would still make an alarm song. Suggesting
that this isn't referential, because they still made the call.
Alarm Calls: Syntax - ✔✔Syntax refers to the rules of ordering words within a sentence to
achieve a different meaning
,•In bird songs and many other systems, there is a specific order to signal components, and
interfering with that order disrupts communication function but it does not change the
"meaning", i.e. the response of the receiver to the signal.
•A recent example suggests that there might be syntactic communication in animals.
•Campbell's monkeys also produce alarm calls in response to predators and other disturbances.
- 6 alarm call types given in different contexts. can add things on to give different meaning -->
like speech
Human Language vs. Primate Communication - ✔✔•Male Campbell's monkeys are limited to a
relatively small range of messages that they can convey to their audience.
•This is partly because callers do not take full advantage of the potential of their communicative
system. For example, they do not inverse the order of calls (e.g., AB to BA) to generate
differences in meaning.
•Human language is symbolic in the sense that signalers can inform listeners about referents
that are not physically present.
•Campbell's monkeys only call in response to real life experiences, and some observations
suggest that callers did not attempt to inform others.
Human Language + The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test - ✔✔Tom Wolfe - wrote about Electric Kool-
aid Acid Test and the boom "The Right Stuff", and then wrote "Bonfire of the Vanities" (Excesses
on wall street degrading culture). What evidence do we have the human language evolved from
animal communication or did human language evolve spontaneously on its own. Special
creation is the only thing that can explain human language. Point is, not suggesting that
language didn't evolve, suggesting it's not an offshoot of other animal communication.
Characteristics of Language (Faculty) according to Chomsky - ✔✔•Language is by far the most
unique of human traits.
•Humans but not other species have a language organ designed to carry out combinatorial
calculations.
•The combinatorial machinery is a preadaptation for language.
, •There is a generative grammar (not a formal grammar) that provides a single set of rules that
generates all sentences.
•The universal grammar is innate and is shared by all humans using all languages.
General Attributes of Human Language - ✔✔•Symbolic
-arbitrary association of meaning with word, even in the absence the object being considered.
•Generative grammar-a set of innately specified (syntactic) rules:
Dog bites man is not news while
Man bites dog is news.
Syntax in language ^
•Recursive
-rules work at different levels (combine words in phrases, phrases in sentences, etc.).
•Combinatorial
-combines words in an infinite number of sets. There is no such things as the world's longest
sentence.
General Attributes of Human Language - Animal Kingdom - ✔✔•The animal kingdom has been
designed on the basis of highly conserved developmental systems that read an almost universal
language coded in DNA base pairs.
•This system is shown on the left in terms of a phylogenetic tree. In contrast, animals lack a
common universal code of communication, indicated on the right by unconnected animal
groups.
Evolution - ✔✔•The fact that human language is unique to our species does not mean there is
no evolution to study.
•There can be progenitorsto human language.
•Chomsky has often rejected natural selection as offering any insight into human language.
•A review of language evolution suggests differently.
