As a sci-fi nut, I've often thought that we're unlikely to be able to talk to aliens if we can't even manage a crude dialogue with intelligent animals on earth (not even our closest relatives in the ape family.) Sure, we can instruct a dolphin to put a ball through a hoop, but we've made almost no progress in understanding their speech. Stuff like this[1] suggests that some information is being conveyed between whales, but does it qualify as language?

And what about our definition of 'language'? It's not the same as it was a a millennium ago. James Gleick's book "The Information" talks about the fundamental changes in human thought that came about after the development of writing. We think completely differently now that we have a concept of stored ideas. Could it be that writing has made it impossible for us to communicate with animals that don't have it?

But a lack of altruism as a possible reason, though? Fascinating. Chimpanzees have developed tool use and even a way of 'teaching' other chimps what they've learned[2]. Is this contradictory?

[1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9457000/945... [2]http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/688904/posts