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Comment by masswerk | Hacker News Reader

I'm not surprised. It's just that we, as a species, are paticularly bad when it comes to communicating with other species, or, at least, are not that interested in it, and others prove to be better in this. We should avoid projecting our own deficits.

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I’d say we’re pretty interested in learning. We study inter species communication all the time as a species don’t we? We communicate with dogs regularly. The challenge is that we haven’t learned how to have higher-order communication which makes it challenging (we learn to communicate primarily with the species, primarily mammals, we co-habitate with). The more distant evolutionarily from us the harder it is to communicate for us as there’s less commonality and more technological assistance needed.

There's an attempt to refine the normal dog-human interpretative dance into a more formal setup.

Some people are using buttons to get the dog to reply in a context format rather than just gauging enthusiasm for a given task.

https://www.hungerforwords.com

I don't think higher order communication between adults is that simple either. There's a lot of inference and deriving from implication that is prone to error.

Along with the dog featured on that page, there's a YouTube channel full of videos of someone else using the same methods with a cat: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGMTesZlKa0Lokb7ZNqOJXQ/vid...

The cat hasn't developed the same kind of talent for stringing words together, but has managed at least a couple of abstract things like 'mad' as a general unhappy word and 'where (item)' when looking for something.

However, there's plenty of evidence that various species have cracked human communication, at least partly so, while we haven't that much to show…

Which species is better at communicating inter-species than we are?

Anecdotally, We got a couple of Bengal cats a few years ago. We got into the habit of saying 'Hello <cat-name>' every time a cat walked into the room.

Now the cats say 'eh-owww' whenever they see us, and also say the same phrase in different ways depending on what they want/need. It took us a while to work out the meanings of the intonations, but now we are pretty good at working out if it's a greeting, request, or just acknowledgement.

I'm not sure who trained who, but it seems to work. :D

I like when my cat can do a gesture saying "follow me" and then when I follow, he will lead me somewhere and then point with a paw what he wants e.g. a particular treat or when something makes him happy, he will jump and meow in certain way that you can feel it means joy. He also learnt how to say "no". If he doesn't want something he will meow "neeoow", in an eerily human way.

I experienced this as well: cats definitely trying to speak, esp. "No", but, of course, they can't.

Edit: Also, most animals don't point at things. If they are doing so, they are doing this especially for us.

My little dog recently started learning new ways of communicating with us. She does the standard pawing at the door of a room she wants to enter. She then began pawing at her food bowl when she wants food. It now seems like she has started experimenting by pawing at other random objects, then watching for a reaction to see what we do. When we forget to take her down from the bed (she’s scared to jump off), she’ll do a distinct little gruff bark as if to say, “Hey! Come get me!” She now uses a similar bark to tell us when she wants us to remove her little sweaters hahaha

Let's say, all those where some individuals manage to adopt human speech, like various birds, some whales, chimps, etc, or manage to interact with human language symbols by means of sign language or similar. This is quite impressive. To my knowledge, we, while far better equipped, haven't intruded a single communication system of an other species in a way that we could meaningful interact or even use their intrinsic concepts. On a less complex scale, but still impressive are those, who manage to interpret some human practices, like pointing. (Mind that this requires some kind of mirroring to construct an assumed line of sight and some assumptions about what the other might have in mind and what might be an object of interest and engaging in some sort of dialog over this.)

dogs

I think Christianity and Age of Reason (Enlightement) are both to blame. Christianity says humans were god's best creation, Enlightement - the pinnacle of evolution. I heard Islam has, or used to have, a much friendlier approach(nothing related to goats) and it remains to this day in countries like Turkey. People are friendly towards stray animals and even build houses for them. The West instead divides them into pets, wild, and livestock.

It could also be that interest in communication is generally an "uphill game". Which may not be that fortunate in case of contact with an advanced civilization:

We: "Hey, we want to share our science and philosophy and what we found out about the universe!"

Alien scientist (looking at some advanced gauges): "Look, its temperature rises."

;-)

There was a scene like that in one of Robert Sheckley short stories. The author was one of main inspirations for Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy). I highly recommend Robert Sheckley's short stories if you enjoy witty, fast-paced SF with crazy ideas. Terry Pratchett fans should be delighted too.

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