The audio in question: https://m.soundcloud.com/smithsonianmag/noc-the-beluga-whale
Thanks!
A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
81–90 of 139 posts
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#82It seems to me more and more like the biggest, only real difference between most animals and humans is their lack of sophisticated communication. Certainly they communicate; but they do not have access to our rich verbal symbols with which we can convey anything imaginable. Perhaps you could add the lack of a prehensile thumb and deft fingers to build tools with, but I think communication is even more fundamental for…
There are a lot of components needed for civilization. In the case of humans, agriculture was a big one, as it led to the feasibility of cities and specialization of labor. Absent specific adaptations to agriculture, tool making is essential for it. Advanced civilization is greatly helped by written communication (although human history shows we can get pretty far without it), which again depends on tool making. With…
Regarding your brain-body ratio
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eabe2101
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't, like I wouldn't eat dog/monkey even though its socially acceptable in certain place, in my mind its disgusting. Pig on the other hand its delicious.
That’s what I don’t get. Why are some animals acceptable to eat and some are aren’t? I know people who get totally outraged over dog or horse meat at but have no problem with beef or pork. Pigs are very intelligent and emotional. Way more than horses who aren’t that smart in comparison.
I find it hypocritical too, but there are some animals that also just don't taste that great compared to what is "common".
Whale meat for instance resembles beef, in kind of the way alligator resembles chicken. But whale and gator are pretty terrible in comparison to the more common animal so they just aren't worth it to eat.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#84What I find fascinating about this is that there are various species which have tackled human speech with at least some success (both actively and passively), while, conversely, we are apparently rather bad at participating in their communicative acts (like, imitating utterances in a meaningful way). Is it just for a lack of interest on our side, or are we lacking something else? Edit, regarding "something else": App…
> we are able to recognize individuals of other primate species by face at a very early age, but lose this ability soon
I don't know if I buy this. We can recognize individual dogs and cats that we know easily, even reliably distinguishing between very homogeneous looking variants (various golden retrievers that look incredibly similar to one another. I've seen zillions of golden retrievers but would never mistake any of them for my childhood pet.) Why should primates be different than dogs and cats? I suspect it is only because almost nobody has more than passing views of individual primates. I would buy that we cannot easily recognize individual primates that are strangers to us, just as we cannot recognize individual dogs and cats that are strangers to us. Give us half an hour with a primate and I think we'd recognize them just fine.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still miles ahead of a dog. Can you train a dog to understand “put the pine needles in the refrigerator?”
It’s hard to say what’s happening in the video. If the ape is given a command-object-location and must discern all three to correctly complete the task, that would be difficult for a dog. (However, I suspect with as many hours of training as the ape has had, a dog could probably do it. I speculate it would learn all possible trios and remember them as individual commands rather than reconstructing them.) If the ape i…
I think they implied the ape could distinguish because they mentioned the trouble was dealing with two items.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#86What I find fascinating about this is that there are various species which have tackled human speech with at least some success (both actively and passively), while, conversely, we are apparently rather bad at participating in their communicative acts (like, imitating utterances in a meaningful way). Is it just for a lack of interest on our side, or are we lacking something else? Edit, regarding "something else": App…
> Is it just for a lack of interest on our side, or are we lacking something else? A combination of the two probably. I communicate with my pet cat by mimicking her different kinds of meows, hisses, and purrs. It makes it a lot easier because it's very obvious to me she understands that language, but of course it's not perfect It seems unlikely I'm the only person who does this. Probably a lot of people speak to thei…
I do this a lot with my cats and dogs as well, they are smart, they just don't speak my language, so since they were small I spoke to them with sign language, for example if the dogs are still hungry after I give them food, I do the hand gesture of clapping in ASL and that way they understand that there's no more food and can see my hands that I am not hiding/holding anything
There's not much else that I can do when they go insane barking tho..... But they do trust me a lot and I can tell easily when they are trying to tell me things such as "follow me" which happens when they find something weird like a dead frog or some other animal they don't know (neighbors have chickens)
Also they lately have gotten into making holes in the yard (the dogs) if anyone has ideas how to stop that, that'd be great.....
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly, but isn't this more like a replay, is it actually suitable for interaction?
apparently, turkeys have a pretty understandable language. There's a documentary, My Life as a Turkey [1]; he was able to decipher what each call meant (e.g. which squawk meant "snake" and which one meant "eagle"). So, if you were walking with a turkey, and you saw a snake and wanted to warn it about it, you could, in theory, communicate with it. [1] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/my-life-as-a-turkey-introduc...
And these probably would vary by region, just like how whales, dolphins and orcas have different languages too
That's really cool, I didn't knew turkeys did that
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#88What I find fascinating about this is that there are various species which have tackled human speech with at least some success (both actively and passively), while, conversely, we are apparently rather bad at participating in their communicative acts (like, imitating utterances in a meaningful way). Is it just for a lack of interest on our side, or are we lacking something else? Edit, regarding "something else": App…
There's strong implications that we as humans have dedicated wetware hardware for streaming out speech from the data structures in our mind. That hardware seems to be bandwidth constrained to about 39 bits per second. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/human-speech-may-hav... It makes sense that other animals may be able to cargo cult some of the underlying mechanical representations of speech, but would lack th…
Isn't it the absence of hands that has held them back? (from dominance)
Having hands plus less of or less good neural hardware means less dominance, as we see with our simian cousins, yet having the greatest brain on the planet wouldn't provide dominance without the ability to fabricate things.
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really hope that people are working on machine learning projects for animal communication. If you listen to crows and ravens in the wild it seems clear that there are patterns. I would also like to see technology interfaces developed for animal use. I am worried that much of the natural language development that would occur from frequent interaction is being held back by the social isolation of most species that hu…
Apparently horses have a body language.
And it seems, we are much better at linking to this than to audible utterances. Compare the various "whisperers".
Re: A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
#90What I find fascinating about this is that there are various species which have tackled human speech with at least some success (both actively and passively), while, conversely, we are apparently rather bad at participating in their communicative acts (like, imitating utterances in a meaningful way). Is it just for a lack of interest on our side, or are we lacking something else? Edit, regarding "something else": App…
> we are able to recognize individuals of other primate species by face at a very early age, but lose this ability soon I don't know if I buy this. We can recognize individual dogs and cats that we know easily, even reliably distinguishing between very homogeneous looking variants (various golden retrievers that look incredibly similar to one another. I've seen zillions of golden retrievers but would never mistake an…
As I know it, there are tests with babies, where they react to primate individuals, they have seen before, just like to humans they have already seen, and are able to identify strangers. However, this ability is soon lost and the "in-group" focuses to humans only. I haven't a source link on this, but there should be some documentaries on early development on YT (or similar platforms) covering this.