Communication

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Communication

• Psychology 3906

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Introduction

• Animals spend a lot of time communicating
• Defense
• Mating
• Food sources
• To say communication has occurred we need a
  sender and a receiver
• As usual, we can look at evolutionary change, or
  adaptive value (or both of course)
• We can also look at mechanism

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You can dance if you want to.

• Dance language of the honeybees
• Function is to communicate location of food
  sources to hive members
• Hive members then can interpret the dance
• They then go out in the right direction and
  distance (or just right direction, depends) and
  find the food

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The Round Dance

• Used only if food source is lt 50 m away
• Number of circuits in a given time tell how far
  away food source is
• No direction info is given with the round dance

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The Waggle Dance

• If food source is gt 50 m away
• Redundant sources of distance info
• Number of circuits
• Number of waggles
• Number of sound bursts
• All proportional to distance
• Angle of straight line portion of dance gives
  compass direction!
• Up is where the sun is in the sky

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• If you dont think this is cool..
• If they are forced to dance in the open air, they
  will actually use the sun rather than up means
  sun

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Reconstructing the evolution of the honeybee dance

• Lindauers work
• All honeybees dance
• All other Apids dance, but Apis Florea uses a
  sort of open air dance floor

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And the story continues

• Some Trigona species just get exited and hum a
  lot
• Giving out food in the process actually
• Other Trigona species leave a scent mark as well
• Melipona give out pulses of sound
• Sort of leads em out

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Adaptive Value

• The Hive works together anyway, so its best to
  get to food quickly, by getting others involved
• The hive works together, but for very specific
  reasons, and it is not altruism, more on that
  when we get there
• Dont have to waste time leading others out, risk
  predation etc
• Costs?
• Other animals could interpret the signal
• Very unlikely in the bee example

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Sometimes other animals get the signal..

• Tungura Frogs
• Females like the whine chuck call
• Everybody whine chuck tonight.
• (Drives the babes wild)
• But, umm, bats like it too, and bats eat frogs!
• When they are alone, males only whine, when they
  are with other males, they whine chuck

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Language

• Look at human language to see what the
  characteristics are
• Limited vs. Unbounded signal set
• Reference and situational freedom
• Intention

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Language and the non humans

• Dont be impressed by shiny objects
• This may lead to a planet where apes evolved from
  men
• Anthropologists and missionaries
• How can we tell if they are really using language?

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What can we learn

• Can animals learn human lingo
• Stupid question
• Better Q is, what aspects
• Can they learn productively?
• Are apes like little kids?
• Is language learning special?
• Where did human language come from?

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Nim Chimpsky

• Serioulsy, that was his name..
• Looks great
• Two sign utterances
• Basically just imitating
• Damn
• Lana was a bit different, but not much
• Kanzi may be a btter example

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Conclusions

• Animals communicate alll the time
• Olfactory
• Calls
• Various other signals
• Others can learn to pick up on the signals
• Nothing clearly like language though!
• Humans win humans win!!!

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