# Animal Communication

Languages I · Introduction to Linguistics · https://tryals.app/learn/languages-i/animal-communication

## Comparing Systems

Animals certainly communicate. The linguistic question is which design features their systems share with human language.

### The Honeybee Waggle Dance

Karl von Frisch won the 1973 Nobel Prize for decoding the dance. A returning forager encodes two continuous measurements:
- The **angle** of the run gives the direction toward food relative to the sun.
- The **duration** of the run gives the distance.

This system possesses:
- **Displacement**: signals refer to distant locations and past journeys.
- **Semanticity**: signals carry specific, meaningful content.

However, it lacks:
- **Discreteness**: variation is continuous rather than categorical.
- **Duality**: no meaningless subunits recombine into larger units.
- **Productivity**: bees cannot signal novel ideas, such as flying straight up.

### Vervet Alarm Calls

Seyfarth and Cheney showed that vervet monkeys use **three** distinct alarm calls. Each triggers a tailored escape response. Yet three calls yield only three fixed messages.

### Great Apes

Apes like Nim and Kanzi learned hundreds of manual signs or keyboard symbols. However, debates focus on **syntax** rather than vocabulary size.
- Nim mainly repeated prompts and failed to build longer, structured sentences.
- Kanzi demonstrated stronger comprehension of novel spoken commands.

Apes can use symbols intentionally, but they lack recursive grammar.

> **Common pitfall:** Viewing animal communication merely as simplified language. Animal systems are organized along entirely different structural principles.

## Practice questions

8 of this lesson's 13 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. A food source is placed directly above a beehive, reachable only by flying straight up. What happened in von Frisch's experiments, and why does it matter?

A. The foragers increased their dance duration, showing continuous distance encoding
B. The foragers adapted their movements into a novel vertical dance, showing productivity
C. The foragers relied solely on floral scent markings to recruit others, showing redundancy
D. The foragers produced no dance, because the system has no dimension for vertical distance

**Answer:** D. The foragers produced no dance, because the system has no dimension for vertical distance

**Why:** No dance at all. The system encodes direction relative to the sun and horizontal distance, and a source that is neither leaves nothing to encode. This is the cleanest demonstration of a system without **productivity**: not a message that comes out garbled, but one that cannot be formulated.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/animal-communication/a-food-source-is-placed-directly-above-a-beehive-reachable-only-by

### 2. The honeybee waggle dance shows displacement, since it refers to a place the dancer is not at.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True**, and it is genuinely striking. Displacement was long assumed to be uniquely human, and an insect has it. What the dance lacks is duality and productivity, a reminder that the features are independent and that possessing an impressive one does not imply the others.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/animal-communication/the-honeybee-waggle-dance-shows-displacement-since-it-refers-to-a

### 3. Which are true of vervet alarm calls as established by the playback experiments?

A. Each call produces a different escape response
B. The response occurs to the recorded call alone, with no predator present
C. The calls can be combined to describe a new kind of threat
D. There are three acoustically distinct calls

**Answer:** A. Each call produces a different escape response; B. The response occurs to the recorded call alone, with no predator present; D. There are three acoustically distinct calls

**Why:** The playback design is what makes the first three convincing: the recorded call alone, with nothing in the sky or the grass, produces the specific response, so the animals are responding to the signal rather than to the predator. What was not found is any combination of calls into new messages.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/animal-communication/which-are-true-of-vervet-alarm-calls-as-established-by-the-playback

### 4. Sort each observation by whether it supports a RICH interpretation of ape language studies or a SCEPTICAL one.

**Answer:**

- Supports a rich reading: Kanzi responded correctly to novel spoken instructions, Vocabularies reached hundreds of symbols
- Supports a sceptical reading: Mean utterance length did not grow as a child's does, Many reported combinations were prompted by the experimenter

**Why:** Both columns are real, which is why the honest summary keeps both halves: symbols are clearly acquired and used intentionally, and hierarchical recursive syntax has not been demonstrated. Terrace's willingness to re-analyse his own data against his own hypothesis is the methodological lesson of the episode.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/animal-communication/sort-each-observation-by-whether-it-supports-a-rich-interpretation-of

### 5. How many acoustically distinct alarm calls did the vervet studies establish?

**Answer:** 3

**Why:** **Three.** Three calls give three messages, and no combination of them produces a fourth, which is precisely the ceiling that duality of patterning removes in human language.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/animal-communication/how-many-acoustically-distinct-alarm-calls-did-the-vervet-studies

### 6. Complete the comparison of systems.

**Answer:** The bee dance encodes direction by the **angle** of the straight run and distance by its **duration**. It possesses **displacement**, since it refers to a place the dancer is not at, but lacks **productivity**, so nothing outside its two dimensions can be expressed.

**Why:** The four blanks are the whole analysis: a system with exactly two channels, one impressive feature and one absolute limit. Being able to state it that precisely is what the design features are for.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/animal-communication/complete-the-comparison-of-systems

### 7. A communication system can show displacement without possessing productivity. What explains this divergence in the honeybee waggle dance?

A. Displacement requires semanticity whilst productivity depends on grammar
B. The dance relies on discrete symbols whilst novel messages demand analogue signs
C. The dance conveys distant targets but cannot adapt to unprecedented paths
D. Displacement conveys past events whilst productivity refers only to future ones

**Answer:** C. The dance conveys distant targets but cannot adapt to unprecedented paths

**Why:** Bee dances convey remote spatial coordinates without combining discrete units creatively. Lacking duality of patterning, the system cannot generate novel messages beyond its hardwired parameters. Animal communication relies on distinct structural blueprints rather than deficient forms of human syntax.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/animal-communication/a-communication-system-can-show-displacement-without-possessing

### 8. Ape language studies are generally agreed to have demonstrated recursive, hierarchical syntax.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** Vocabulary acquisition and intentional use are widely accepted; recursive hierarchical syntax is not demonstrated to general satisfaction. Saying so is not a dismissal of the animals, it is a statement about which claim the evidence currently supports.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/animal-communication/ape-language-studies-are-generally-agreed-to-have-demonstrated