Шешімі: Reading About Animal Communication

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

Scientists have been trying to get into the world of animals for a long time. One of their goals is to learn to communicate with every living creature in their language. In fact, animals do not use language in the same way that people do. However, many animals do communicate using sounds. For example, dogs can whine, bark or snarl. These sounds may express fear, danger, hunger, or other information. A chicken can produce more than ten signals whereas a dolphin has a range of more than twenty different sounds.

Some birds, such as the gray parrot, can even copy human speech. Once a parrot managed to learn 120 words, which is amazing. Nevertheless, humans are the only animals that can use speech to express ideas. Even if animals are trained to reproduce sounds similar to those used by people, it’s still not speech.