Lingua franca

Humans talk to animals more than we think. We tell kittens that we love them, command dogs to fetch and sit, and shoo foxes away from our gardens. Yet we never expected any of these animals to speak back - until now.

ZoologistsScientists who study animals and their behaviour. have spent years researching the great apes.¹ The findings are amazing. Apes use a type of sign language to talk to each other, using a shared alphabet over 80 gestures.

A chimpanzee or bonobo can make a long scratch across their chest to ask to be groomed. It can call its friends over by beckoning with its fingers pointing down. And it can stroke another's mouth to ask to share some food.

A study from St Andrews University reveals something even more remarkable. Researchers asked over 5,500 volunteers to answer a multi-choice quiz on what these gestures meant.

The humans were correct over 50% of the time. This suggests that we have natural ability with ape sign language. Maybe we can learn to speak it.

Our own ways of communicating could have the same root as that of apes. Dr Kirsty Graham said: "I think we can now be more confident that this is something that was shared with the last common ancestor." Some of the ape gestures are similar to those used by human infants.

From Rudyard KiplingAn English novelist who wrote The Jungle Book. 's The Jungle Book to the Doctor Dolittle stories and films, speaking to animals has been an enduring human fantasy. But now, the door to the possibility of human-ape communication has begun to open.

It might soon open even further. Scientists have set up listening spots in ecosystemsComplex networks of living things that rely on each other to survive. around the planet, and fitted animals with microphones that let us record their sounds.² We already have huge databases of whale songs and honeybee dances.³

Geographer Professor Karen Bakker writes: "These digital devices function like a planetary-scale hearing aid: enabling humans to observe and study nature's sounds beyond the limits of our sensory capabilities." 

It has taken years to analyse even small amounts of this information. But this may be about change. Experts are creating Artificial IntelligenceArtificial intelligence, or "AI," is the ability for a computer to think and learn. With AI, computers can perform tasks that are typically done by people, including processing language, problem-solving, and learning. programmes that might be able to swiftly decode the data. Bakker imagines "a zoological version of Google Translate". Armed with it, we could attempt to speak in animal tongues.

Others are less convinced. Immense progress has been made with apes. But they are our closest relatives. Their bodies are similar to ours. Take anything more alien, whether a horse, an elephant, a hummingbird or a jellyfish, and the picture gets more complex. And even if we work out how seahorses chat, there is no guarantee we can reply.

Some have even thrown doubt on our ability to understand how animals naturally communicate. Animals change their behaviour when people are around. LinguistSomeone who studies the development and workings of languages. Some linguists study how modern languages work, while others study how languages developed historically; still others try to translate ancient languages. Noam Chomsky thinks that experiments tend to teach animals to act like humans, rather than reveal any special language of their own. He says: "It's rather as if humans were taught to mimic some aspects of the waggle dance of bees and researchers were to say, 'Wow, we've taught humans to communicate'."⁴

Yes: First the great apes. Then the whole animal kingdom. The seeds of communication are already laid. And we are on the verge of an incredible technological advance that could connect us for good.

No: We should not get ahead of ourselves. Even if we manage to decode the language of animals, we might not be able to speak it back to them. How does a human sing whale song or perform a waggle dance?

Or... It is clear that some animals have powerful communicative abilities. But they remain the exception. There is little evidence that, say, slugs or starfish possess anything like the same capacity.