Teaching animals to be grammatical - Can Animals Grammar? #2

[@NativLang]

This: how good was their grammar? 🥰 Next: how bad was their grammar? 🧐

[@adrianblake8876]

Most examples here didn't grammar, they just have vocabulary (which is impressive, but not grammar)...

[@superhond1733]

​@@adrianblake8876its if. Not they can.

[@adrianblake8876]

@@superhond1733 A border collie memorizing over 200 words is impressive, but is not grammar by any definition of the word... That is what I'm going for. It harder to prove things like morphology or syntax (phonolgy is the least of these experiments concerns)...

[@rdklkje13]

@NativLang Just a heads up that the link following "Art, animation and music by me. I wrote a sources document to explain and back up claims and to credit all images, fonts and sounds:" in the description above leads to a document about one of your previous videos = "SOV: World’s Most Popular Word Order". My guess is this wasn't intentional.

[@FairyCRat]

It feels a bit sad to know that while this video shows what seems to be huge discoveries for language fans, we're actually about to get disappointed.

[@kathyjohnson2043]

I'm expecting it to be somewhat so but not completely.

[@thinwhitemook8314]

I know you're gonna get to the infamy part, but just the mention of dolphins in this video makes me think of a specific "experiment" in this field. If ya know, ya know.

[@johannsebastianbach3411]

Wait, we don’t know! Could you enlighten the rest of the class? Just tell me what to google

[@56independent]

@@johannsebastianbach3411The Nazis tried to teach them to speak.

[@qwertyTRiG]

He was just a bit distracted. She needed to relax him.

[@chiquiflautro]

​@@johannsebastianbach3411Google Margaret Lovatt dolphin experiment

[@EchoLog]

I wish I didn't remember this.

[@BenMConner]

My cat Monkey uses 14 buttons. He would hit “treats” to ask for treats, and we would say “treats no. to ask for treats, and we would say no treats. Where is Teeny? Teeny, Monkey, Treats.” Teenie is his little brother. So now he will call Teenie by hitting the Teenie button and then do treats. We got another cat, Misha, and now he just does Misha, Teenie, treats. He gets what he wants more often when the troops are rallied. He also lies. He’ll hit “outside” and stand by the door, knowing I’ll get up to let him out. However I don’t always give him treats when he asks. So when I get up,he moves from the door, hits treats and looks at me. He lies about outside to get me up and does a switcheroo.

[@laurencefraser]

Cats are difficult to train... but it's not for lack of ability to learn!

[@Ghi102]

My cat has also learned that pawing at the door gets our attention and often tries to direct us to the treats cupboard after asking to go outside

[@generatoralignmentdevalue]

Dude they don't have theory of mind. I'm pretty sure from my own experience that they don't even have object permanence. These are prerequisites for telling a lie. He's just trying combinations of actions to see if they result in treats.

[@n3ishere]

​@@generatoralignmentdevalue research shows cats have object permanence :)

[@flamingorentals6819]

Keep your cat inside

[@OscarMSmithMusic]

"maybe I'll verb the noun 'grammar'" was my favourite thing you said. Even more funny because verb is verbed there, despite also being a noun

[@kengisamasempisankun]

wrong in that sentence it was a verb

[@somemushroom5069]

Well I guess he also just verbed verb

[@kathyjohnson2043]

I am most amazed by Billi, the cat who uses buttons. Cats are not necessary out to please as dogs are so her communication seems to be more for her own benefit. Everyone who has tried to figure out what a cat was meowing for (or a baby crying, for that matter). She will comment on happenings that don't seem to involve wanting food, etc. snd, she loves to express herself with 'mad' and her tail shows she onows exactly what she's saying! I studied linguistics in grad school and the more I learned about language usage, the more I realized that how one defines language determines which communications are language and, therefore, we are asking the wrong question. Grammer, syntax, gesture... they are all terms that help us talk ABOUT communication, but, in the end, I think what matters is the interplay of culture, environment, physical traits and (for lack of a better term) cognative structure. After all, does it really matter if it is language or not if it serves the purposes it needs to.

[@rdklkje13]

You watching Todd too by any chance? He’s as amazing as Billi, if not more.

[@kathyjohnson2043]

I don't all the time; I like her personality. She is both all cat and something unexpected with her comfort with travel, etc. @@rdklkje13

[@frost8077]

I'll sometimes think about the different ways my cat meows at me. Instead of using grammar, she seems to put an emotional intent into the form of a single command or comment which varies by the way the meow is stressed. Humans do this too as well, like how a word stress can shift the word meaning from sarcastic to excited.

[@kathyjohnson2043]

Yes and Billi, a cat who is great at using buttons seldom meows but uses the buttons instead. I can't help but think dhe has decided that we humans are too stupid to understand cat so she's gotta translate for us!

[@frost8077]

@@kathyjohnson2043 I watched a video where two cats will spin in a circle for their treats after they were trained to do this, but will meow in defiance when their owner tried to get them to spin the other direction. It makes me wonder if cats just have a really specific way of doing things from a hyper focused thought pattern, almost like being too smart to learn more things. I'll sometimes see animals display rare examples of being way smarter than they seem, but too stubborn to be in the position to take in learn information because they're so forward driven.

[@Mohenjo_Daro_]

Tones can be considered grammatical. Take sarcasm: The sentence's word order doesn't change, but the inflections do which changes the meaning. In English we think of grammar as just the word order, but grammar is the structure as a whole: word order, inflections, tones, etc.. You can even have a single word have grammatical aspects like in Navajo (at least I believe Navajo is one of the languages that does that). That's not to say cats have a languages, but it's something I find neat :)

[@PlatinumAltaria]

I wish people could recognise that other animals are highly intelligent without necessarily doing exactly what humans do. Elephants can't talk but they are demonstrably highly intelligent, some argue the most intelligent among non-humans. As Obi Wan said: "the ability to speak does not make you intelligent"

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

I don't see how your certain elephants don't talk given how vocal they are (If you think they're ever being quiet, they may be making sounds too low for humans to hear)

[@PlatinumAltaria]

@@GaasubaMeskhenet As this series is getting into, vocalisations aren't necessarily language. I'm aware of their use of infrasound. My point was more that, we treat language as the only metric of high intelligence.

[@faenethlorhalien]

True. Trump speaks non-stop and yet he's dim as an old brick

[@krankarvolund7771]

@@GaasubaMeskhenet Elephants communicate, but they're not using language, as far as we know, to do it. Language and communication are not the same thing, I can communicate with a Papu or a San, without knowing anything about their languages, even if they don't speak english. When we ask, can animals talk, we don't mean, can they communicate, we mean, can they use an artificial structured communication used to share abstract ideas.

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

@@krankarvolund7771 so where is the threshold to language? If words can go in any order with no particles does that become not a language? If they can communicate "when it is dry there is always water here" as "Dry forever water" "Water dry forever" Does that not count as language? And did you mean the word abstract? I don't see how language needing to be able to communicate things other than physical things matters. It's also the most difficult thing to prove comprehension of (Please don't hold to hard into the exact definitions of the words I used as example. If elephants have a word for "forever" that would be abstract but I don't think it matters for my first point)

[@atlasaltera]

I love the journey you've taken us from ancient Egyptian all the way to cutting edge Animal Linguistics!

[@bordenfleetwood5773]

I went into the dog button experiment fully aware of the "clever hans effect," but I figured the worst outcome was $24 spent on spending time with my dogs, so whatever. I was pleasantly surprised, though not anything that upends current understanding of what is or isn't possible. I have two Siberian Huskies. Not well known for being easy to train. Both male. We introduced the buttons when one dog was about two years old, and the other was about four months old. We gave them buttons with words for "food," "water," "outside," and "play." Common words that they were already hearing everyday because, again, I didn't expect much. If they learned to use the correct buttons for immediate needs, I would have called it a success. We used operant conditioning, modeling each sound and associating it with the appropriate object or activity, and provided a treat (positive reinforcement) when the button was used unprompted in the proper context. As expected, the adult dog interacted with the buttons somewhat, especially when my partner and I were present and actively working with him, but he quickly let it go and preferred to play more familiar games with us. The puppy, still at the height of his mental plasticity, responded more readily, and that's where things got interesting. He quickly grasped the conditioning, both in use of the buttons themselves and which one produced which result. So far, so good, and all within expectations. He would use the "food" button to attempt to get extra food between feedings, since the others were all given freely (within reason). This was also expected, so food became a variable item. After a couple of weeks, he started to only use the "food" button within an hour or so of normal feeding time. That could be classical conditioning (Pavlov's Bell), or it could be word association, so we don't give that much credit, beyond us being happy that he was no longer calling for food all day long. That's when the anomalies started happening. Again, don't get excited. The puppy would start calling for "water" or to go "outside," but when given water or called for his leash, it was sometimes the older dog who showed up. No shoving or excited taking of what another is being given, just a calm trot up to the door like he had been the one to ask, or casually strolling over to the water dish while the puppy, job seemingly done, ran off to play with a toy. It reminded me of an immigrant I was working with at the time who could speak English well enough if he wanted to, but would constantly get someone else to do the translating at every chance he got. Amusing, and very interesting. The one that really got us started about a month later. We regularly take them to a dog park that puts out those little kiddie pools for the dogs to play in during the summer. They're always a hit with the dogs. Our younger dog, now fully capable of using his limited vocabulary, always wanted to go to the park. But the "play" button was only for his home toys: balls, ropes, puzzles, etc. So he started pushing "outside" and "water" in that order, and then sitting by the door. We didn't get it at first, since he often fumbled buttons and pushed more than one. So, we gave him water, since it was usually the second button that he was after. Instead, he went back, pushed the same buttons in the same order, splashed both front paws into the water dish, and then ran to the door. We still didn't get it. We did two days later, during our normal trip to the dog park. It was a normal trip, with the puppy splashing happily and lounging until we were afraid his undercoat would felt. He had been driving us both nearly mad with his "outside, water" husky tantrums for days, and watching him splash around in the pool... just like he'd been doing with his water dish for two days... it made sense. But that could also be us anthropomorphizing a dog. So we decided not to act too excited. Then we got home, and had more normal interactions with the dogs and the buttons for the next three days, before he started following the same strange behavior. Always the "outside" followed by "water" and then going directly to the door where his harness was kept. He would ask for "outside" or "play" or "water" appropriately most of the time, but during the normal time we'd go to the park, regardless of the day, he would ask for his Outside Water. It happened enough that I needed to concede that this was a thing. The soaked kitchen floor around his water dish stood as testament to his classic husky tantrums in regards to this issue. That puppy had figured out how to associate those sounds together, despite no human modeling a connection between the buttons and the dog park, and the words he did have were conditioned to mean specific, unrelated items or activities. The buttons eventually broke, as they were never intended for the rough treatment of a husky having a temper tantrum, so the experiment mostly ended. We still model the words, and he clearly understands them, and has built a body language to express those needs, but he no longer has his "voice." Mostly. Every once in a while he will want water, and then do this deep talking growl that sounds like a demon saying "wa-warrr." It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But that's about it. All of this is, of course, anecdotal, and I'm just a dude on the internet, and my dog isn't exactly conditioned for a proper science experiment. But that's kind of the point, isn't it? To have random people repeat the experiment ad nauseam until we have enough data to start to draw conclusions. So, my conclusions, from my own two data points, are as follows: One dog, introduced to language substitutes later in life, expressed general disinterest beyond what would be expected of a new toy. The other dog, when introduced to the technology at a young age, demonstrates greater mental plasticity than would be expected. As neither specimen in this case represents a superior or outlier ability in any other capacity, it can be safely assumed that they represent part of the average intellect among canis familiaris, and their breed in particular. That said, the unusual behavior demonstrated in the younger dog suggests that the species generally may be capable of higher levels of learning, object permanence and non-linear thinking than is currently reported in the wider scientific consensus.

[@deadbirdkitsch]

Thank you for being so even handed. I've been part of the button community since 2020 and it's *extremely* rare for content creators to talk about us with anything other than patronizing contempt. Your videos have actually been very helpful through that journey. Learning about how different cultures talk about color or time for instance, have helped me think more laterally. It's so important not to assume that an animal's point of reference is the same as ours. I do hope that in addition to the literature, you've talked to some actual button teachers. It's very rare that anyone ever engages with us in good faith.

[@HMJ66]

Buttons are just pavlovian conditioning - the dog presses the button that says "outside" because they've been trained to associate that button with being let outside. They press the "treat" button because they associate it with getting a treat. The outside button could say "Hammock", the treat button could say "stopwatch", and they'd still serve the same purpose. Animals are intelligent, but every scientific study into animals "talking" has come to the conclusion that they can't use language in the same way as humans, and everyone who has claimed their animal can talk has turned out to be a hoax or a con. Again that's not to say they're not intelligent, but animals using buttons doesn't mean they can speak or understand human language, it's just basic conditioning and association.

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

Alex once said "want window" and when he was taken there he said "good birdy good boy" to his mom He once asked "what color Alex?" He would yell out the wrong answers during other birds sessions He invented the word "yummybread" when he was given birthday cake for the first time He would say "wanna go back" when he was tired of a session

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

I say mom but I mean his main handler. The head of the project I say window but his word for the window he wanted was "tree"

[@adparatus7918]

Asking "what color Alex?" is especially fascinating. Asking himself "What color am I?" made him the only non-human animal to ever ask an existential question. He would purposely lie in tests if other birds got an award, mock other birds who got lower scores than him (by purposefully going above what they could count), and would repeat stuff he thought was funny (he would, at times, recollect a memory to when he bit a trainer and perform it, including her voice). Very, very intelligent animal.

[@Galaxia7]

I just have one thing to say to that: GLASK

[@saegerrr]

This is perhaps why I'm so disappointed by this series. So far, no detailed examples were given, just superficial overviews. Feels like a never-ending intro. And there are lots of examples, just like these you presented about Alex, one more fascinating than the other!

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

@@saegerrr it's good to have a quick surface level intro to a topic so vast. The people who don't want to do deep dives but would benefit from knowing are less likely to click off. I'm thankful for all the name drops for people to look into I do think I remember not really liking how some things were phrased but I don't feel like rewatching to find what it was

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

Matata was Kanzi's favorite adult. His mom was sometimes jealous. He was just brought along to the lessons because he wanted Matata and happened to learn along side her

[@AmbiCahira]

I love languages but my biggest passion is animals and that includes animal training and animal psychology and behavior so I know where this is going, but I am still finding this very interesting and enjoyable to hear you talk about it. I think the magic happens when the human learns how the animal naturally communicates and learn to read their natural communication instead of trying to get animals to become "bilingual".

[@MenelionFR]

Thank you so much Josh! I once read about Koko that, when she asked to say "Gorilla", she signed "Animal person". I don't know even whether it is true, but it deeply moved me that moment. I believe, they understand. They really do.

[@malegria9641]

Something I find interesting is that my dog responds to hand signals, but not just in a “point at ground to sit” way. I’ve taught him to retrieve a toy using four different signs, where I first point at myself then at him, then the toy, and then the ground. If I do it in the wrong order, he doesn’t do it.

[@mikaelagirard]

This series is fascinating! Really looking forward to the next part!

[@dedicatedspuddler7641]

In the mid 1980s I had the pleasure of taking classes in graduate school from both Alan and Trixie Gardner (I was even a grad assistant for her). Their stories of Project Washoe were fascinating and made all the more relevant by hearing them first hand and in the same spaces the project occurred. Debating language with them was a real treat and very intellectually stimulating.

[@darthguilder1923]

Grammatical animals sounds like a good name for a children’s tv show

[@sksk-bd7yv]

I've missed your work, NativLang!

[@GustavoLadeira42]

MF made a systematic review of the literature just because he got interested in the subject. Jesus Christ, how I wish I had friends like this.

[@ideacatstudiosunlimited5951]

been looking forward to this since it was announced!

[@Gamesaucer]

It might be better to view language as a spectrum. On one side you have simple communications like alarm calls that we already know many (if not most) animals are capable of, and on the other you have human language as we know it. I find the question "where does X species fall on this spectrum?" much more interesting than the question "can X species use language?". I definitely think researchers have been overly focused on replicating human-style language use. Obviously that's the most exciting possibility, but I think we'd be better off recognising what innate capability animals already have for communication and exploring what the limits of that are, rather than jumping into an entirely different realm of communication. Parrots and corvids are very skilled at replicating human speech and they're among the most intelligent birds, but I've yet to see (or hear) anything resembling "human" language from them. Identifying objects and being able to associate sounds with them is definitely proof of intelligence, but it's not proof of "language". Abstract concepts like "big" vs "small" gets a lot closer, but understanding what "fetch big ball" or "fetch small toy" means still doesn't rely on actual grammar. Perhaps it's worth classifying that as "language" under some definitions of that word; after all, it has lexical adjectives, nouns, and verbs. But it's definitely not "human" language. But I don't think it really needs to be. I'd be very interested in finding the limits of animal communication along these sorts of lines where it's linked to abstract reasoning rather than particular patterns. Ultimately, I think the nuances just can't be captured by asking one, or even just a few polar questions, because the answer to those rests too much on whatever arbitrary definitions of "language" and "grammar" we're working under, and thus explains more about those definitions than it does about the animals.

[@rdklkje13]

This! It's so human centric to make human language the standard of measurement, especially when the jury is still out on what exactly this even is, fundamentally.

[@stellarawesomesauce9265]

"A legendary spooky mongoose named Gef" is probably in my top 10 favorite phrases I've ever heard in the English language.

[@acosmicotaku8525]

>Mentions ape communications research. >Flashback to the Soup Emporium video essay. Honestly, prairie dogs, corvids, and cetaceans [maybe cephalopods] are probably our best bets to find the closest thing to a proper non-human language, and it still probably wont be a true language [as humans use it], but probably something fitted to their specific nature. Which will still be incredibly interesting to learn about regardless. I wonder how well AI pattern recognition might be able to help us parse out the details of decoding these communication systems?

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

I'm p sure I heard about scientists using AI to study elephant language

[@acosmicotaku8525]

@@GaasubaMeskhenet I am just largely interested in how AI augments the human faculties, tbph. I've heard it be suggested by AI might be useful for partitioning out the morphemes and structures of cetacean communication, even if it's almost certainly never going to be able to translate it without human aid. It probably won't be too useful for analyzing squid communication without use of a 3D model of the animal articulated and textured by human hands, but I'd still be interested in seeing what it can do. Do you remember where you heard about the AI assisted elephant communication research?

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

There's a grove that elephants frequently visit and scientists have set up cameras and mics all around it so they can pinpoint the exact elephant that made the sound and have as much context as possible. Its been a while since i heard about that. I wonder how they're doing

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

My cat has a ride vocal range. I didn't raise him so his vocabulary is limited but he can say Ham, Out, and Wow Ham - wet food Out - through door Wow - love and attention When i give him wet food he gets so excited he sometimes says wam Wow ham ham wow wam

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

I don't know if he can say Ham quietly lol I don't know if he can say Out loudly. It's a really short sound He can say Wow different ways I really should have made it different words. He can say it with more or less trill

[@stevejohnson3357]

Dogs are an interesting example. Abilities cover a large range but you cannot teach a dog the meaning of "Go around to the back." It's because they lack that ability that they can seem to read our minds because they look for gestures and tones of voice that we do not. Once, my sister's dog discovered the concept of squirrel at my Dad's place. On a return visit, it looked like she had told her pack mate chihuahua but probably, he saw how excited she got when she knew where she was headed.

[@lanasinapayen3354]

My dog is one of those button pushing dogs from the early days, and he's always had a set grammar. Never deviated from subject verb adjective object.

[@lanasinapayen3354]

He also make his own compound words, like most button pushing pets

[@krankarvolund7771]

I don't want to spoil the next video, but already I find it dubious that Washoe was considered special for using "water bird" to designate a swan. It was a bird on water, isn't it more obvious that he combined the signs, because he saw a bird on the water? ^^'

[@Catlily5]

Only if he still called it water bird when it was out of the water.

[@krankarvolund7771]

@@Catlily5 If I recall correctly he called it once, when it was in water 😅

[@Catlily5]

@@krankarvolund7771 Your guess is probably better then.

[@Malekith227]

@@Catlily5 It's even dumber than that. Most of the times only the caretaker of Washoe was capable of "understanding" his home-brew the signs. Every random movements of his hand was interpreted as a sign, outside of any context. They were projecting on the primate things they wanted to see. That's one of the reasons the whole experience was considered unscientific.

[@martinkois7126]

I can't wait for part 3!!

[@pierreabbat6157]

Did Irene Pepperberg ever find that Alex thought two colors are different when they look the same to us?

[@tommyss4l]

I met Alex and Dr. Pepperberg when I was a kid (my mom knew her). Alex was absolutely amazing in what he could do mentally. I've had multiple parrots and to greater and lesser degrees they really did understand what we were saying to them.

[@SisterSunny]

oh man this series is so fucking cooool!

[@jpopelish]

I never tried to teach my dog to speak, but she showed me, every day, that she understood conversational English. A couple of illustrative videos on my channel are "A Short Conversation about Cheese", and "An Evening in the Life of a Princess". Once I told her about a plan to go see one of her friends and she got very excited. Then I realized that I was telling her about a plan for the next day, not the immediate future. I explained that we were going to go on this adventure, tomorrow, after we went to sleep and got up. She thought for a moment, ran to the bedroom and jumped into her bed.

[@louisng114]

Seems like the animals would be good at Toki Pona.

[@BrianMcInnis87]

Answer: Yes, some of us quite clearly can.

[@DogFoxHybrid]

Have you seen Apollo and Frens?

[@b43xoit]

So you're going to cite Clever Hans without mentioning the explanation.

[@jimmiemurvin1871]

Animals can't be any more challenging to teach grammar than some humans I've encountered in the past.

[@MrCmon113]

My proposal for a tests of animal speech is to have humans solve tasks being assissted by animals that are talking to them. The humans lack information only the animal has. Both are rewarded for their combined performance. This way at least the humans communicating can't deceive themselves.

[@dstinnettmusic]

Certified “I me you orange me you eat me you orange” moment.

[@Weissenschenkel]

Stanford's BIO-150 (on KZbin) has a great lecture where Sapolsky talks about Nim and Koko, among other primates.

[@x-lendrow806]

Can you make a video about Burushaski language? I think its really interesting.

[@flamboyantness]

Can you do a video on the maldivian dialects and dhivehi?

[@tiffanymarie9750]

I do think we're wrong to consider human language as a test for intelligence. No two species will ever need to communicate the same things in the same ways for the same reasons. Dogs might not have complex grammar, but they can learn and communicate a lot with scent that we could never fully understand.

[@KimmoKM]

Right, intelligence isn't one-dimensional: just about all species are superhuman in some mental processing axis (say, [flying] birds would be much better at processing visual stimulus quickly, being adapted to avoiding obstacles while flying in high speeds, and dogs are superior at processing olfactory sense data). Chimps for instance are notoriously better than humans even in a task as generic as short-term memory (although humans can learn memorization techniques that get them to par) and by my reckoning typical chimps are better even in some deeply human cognitive tasks like social maneuvering than low-functioning autistic humans. Even species like bees have surprising cognitive capabilities like a heuristic for dealing with traveling salesman problem for optimizing their routes from flower to flower, and while I'm not aware of any research, I wouldn't be too surprised if they were as good at it as humans are with their sheer intuition (although humans can, at least with tools like writing in sand/piece of paper, be trained to manually execute algorithms like Lin-Kernighan). But then, that's a separate matter from possessing or not possessing the ability to use symbolic and grammatical language.

[@Jess38044]

agreed. i don't think it's wise to insist on a human-centric way of operating in the world as a yardstick for measuring intelligence - or anything really - as it's biased af and we could be missing out on a lot of cool things just because we have those blinkers on At the same time I understand why it happens. Gotta start somewhere. Hopefully we/researchers keep going and exploring other possibilities that put our bias as a species by the wayside

[@tiffanymarie9750]

@@Jess38044 I do think the fact that we are having these conversations at all is a good sign that we're at least doing a decent job. Debate and skepticism are as necessary to learning as experimentation and observation, imo.

[@Jess38044]

@@tiffanymarie9750 absolutely, 100% agreed! Asking questions and watching for the answers :)

[@MrCmon113]

That's a completely baseless assertion. How precisely did you figure out that dogs communicate something not only you don't understand, but no one could ever understand? That's some monstrous form of arrogance. I don't think you have ever even thought about what communication or meaning or understanding is.

[@Myriako]

Thank you for this video! 😀🌻

[@eduliborio8]

Thanks for sharing!

[@timinimification]

😄 excellent to find a Gef reference in the wild! Unfortunately I would not include him in the group "animal" as he was more of a fairy tale creature or as he was first described in local Manx newspapers a "buggane" which means something like a bogeyman or apparition! Remember he said himself that he had hands! he had feet!

[@jcortese3300]

I'm interested to see where this goes. The only persistent memory I have about the whole business is the fact that only hearing people who didn't sign thought that Koko was actually signing. When a deaf researcher who signed fluently was brought into the mix, she saw no indication whatsoever that Koko could sign. I wish I could find what I still recall reading; I'm hoping that you may have found it. It was a first-person story by the deaf researcher who said that she remembers being handed a pad of paper like that handed to the other researchers, and told like them to write down every sign she saw Koko make. At the end of the day, the non-signing hearing researchers' pads of paper were filled with lists of signs they supposedly saw Koko make. Her pad of paper had nothing written on it. I still remember reading her comment (paraphrased here): "Koko would move her hands, and the researchers would write it down and say 'Look! That's exactly the ASL sign for water!' It wasn't." Well-meaning hearing people have a very mystical idea of what ASL is, and I can't shake the suspicion that this airy-fairy mystical view informed their desire to imagine that Koko was signing. And the fact that the ONE deaf fluent signer saw no indication that Koko was actually signing strengthens this suspicion. I'm curious to see what you found out.

[@rdklkje13]

Nice video, except it's a pity that you kinda dismiss pet buttons as "an internet sensation" and that your spreadsheet still contains no mention of this for cats. I know you can't cover everything, but this is about as interesting as this topic gets, considering how much further this citizen science experiment goes than any of the historical attempts to train a few isolated animals. Federico Rossano et.al.'s first paper on pet buttons may still be in peer review, but if you pay attention to the serious study participants, like the cats Billi and Todd, it's very clear that this is intentional communication. Like when Billi repeatedly asks about her absent 'dad' or reminds her 'mom' that it's time for her disgusting medication. And when Todd relates how happy he is (whatever that may mean to him exactly) that the vet was able to relieve his mouth ache a few weeks earlier or plans out his day in the morning by letting his 'dad' know what he wants to do that evening and then makes sure that his plan is carried out when the time comes even if 'dad' forgot. Whether the 4-5 word phrases/sentences emulating the language of another species that these cats sometimes use constitute language depends on your definition of language, but it is not inconceivable that it does. Either way, that it is communication couldn't be clearer.

[@somerandomgal3915]

I am still kinda looking at your "animal linguistics" series from a computer science perspective there. It may sound weird but i do have a specific part within that field that I cannot help but associate it with animal and human languages: Communication between computers, this itself there being understood as transferring information on one computer to another one and how that in particular is being understood. For starters: information itself is being understood there as an abstract non physical thing or idea that is supposed to be carried within the computer itself and also over to the other computer it is supposed to be transferred to. That information in question most like has to be transferred out of either a specific need and/or for a specific purpose and/or function. Now *how* can this be achieved best? Well, within the computer itself one may think of internal wiring and transistors from one specialised computing chip to another different one, and to have it be from computer to computer one may instead think of a wifi or Bluetooth connection, maybe of a cd or USB stick, maybe even a cable for some things, or if one is really old school, a floppy disk or even hole cards. While strictly speaking it wouldn't wrong, since these are being used as a medium to transfer information through, they're closer to the equivalent of air being used for spoken communication and light for visiual communication, etc. And neither air nor light on their own really "contain" the type of information that they are medium to, just by existing. Now going back to our computer example, the next thing one would think about are those electric pulses being carried between those processing chips within a computer and from Computer to computer, be it via a cable or wifi/bluetooth, etc. or other very tiny indents and (magnetic) imprints on cds, bluerays and floppy disks. Those can be understood as "signals" and usually are within computer science, since a signal by its very definition does carry and transfer information. With our spoken language analogue we could compare that to the vibrations and pressure differences within the air travelling through it, giving a basis for sound, with visual language and light, the various different frequencies and intensities + direction that they do come from, therefore giving a basis for colour and shape and movement. You can at this point even argue for particles within the air being a signal for the basis of a smelling based language there, since that too carries information. But electric pulses, and pressure differences within the air, etc. aren't on their own necessarily caused with purpose, nor would these be safe from staying intact or getting corrupted. Be it by noise, something on the way distorting it, it getting burried under a ton of other additional noises and signals, or in the case of cds, bluerays and floppy disks, that the imprints on them take damage in the form of for example scratches, thereby altering signal and the information they carried in the first place. Additionally i am pretty sure that no normal human would understand without further context a sequence of only "1"s and "0"s, representing electrical pulses within a signal, as anything meaningful or even remotely understandable. And i think *functional* language itself, as I at least understand it, starts to become a thing. Cause here it is where one needs to apply rules (you could call that "grammar" already, if you wish), about how all of these signals have to be interpeted and read and to what "symbol" the signal, consisting of a series of pulses and so on, corresponds to and can be translated to. That symbol itself contains within it all of that, which can here be called "data" for now. What symbol contais what type of data has to be known/aggreed upon by both the emmiter (the initial computer, containing and sending our information) and the receiver (the computer said information is supposed to be transfered to) if they both shall be able to use the same symbol without problems. We can decide that for computers in advance, what which signal and symbols means what, and therefore control how they all are interpreting it. You otherwise wouldn't be able to read this very comment here, for which you are also using your very own understanding of the written english language to understand that as well. With animals however and other living beings, *including* even other humans, we just don't know with 100% certainty. Heck, misunderstandings between other humans sharing a language, not to mention literal language barriers between humans are a thing, but we do usually somewhat understand that they work and experience things in some way similar to us, just based on the fact and knowledge that the other is human too. With animals it is however far more difficult for the same reasons though, since we aren't within their literal bodies, sharing their experiences and differing senses, perceptions and inner workings and understandings of thingd. So finding out wether or not they understand the same symbol we use in the same way we do (as in, have the same understanding of what it is supposed to represent), is of course going to be far more difficult to prove and test, without having to expect it all being closer to a lucky accidential correct guess, that works well enough for what they use it for, rather than an actual understanding of what humans like us using that symbol, understand and interpret it as. Having some scepticism in those infamous cases of specific animals learning how to use human language is therefore i think a healthy approach. On the other hand, all a language sometimes just needs to be is to work well enough for what it is actually being used for. In all the ape examples for example, with apes using by humans predefined symbols, it can therefore also be argued that the apes in question have made up a language for *themselves* out of those for what they maybe understand as the language for *them communicating with humans for stuff*. So maybe having it a goal to find out if animals are able or not to understand those symbols we use in the same way that we do, is also not a good approach either. *How* are they using *their* own symbols and *what* are those and *for what* however could be easier and more practical to find out and answer.

[@Jess38044]

I smiled when the buttons were mentioned - I remember seeing one video floating around of a dog who asked for treats with the buttons and its owner said no, and then it started hitting a "bitch" button repeatedly ahahaha I love the idea of dogs using buttons to sass their humans but I have no idea if they understand what's going on beyond gauging human reaction

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

Researchers have had to restrict playing back dolphin sounds because if they play back a dolphins name call, that dolphin gets real upset

[@frankharr9466]

O.K. That's a start.

[@ihaytelief654]

Hey NativLang random suggestion but I would love to see a video done on Arawakan language in South America and the carribean.

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

Chantek was framed! He never should've been locked up without a trial.

[@Carols989]

love your videos, and this is fascinating but can we give more attention that they called it Nim Chimpsky? Its brilliant

[@bjam89]

My birds know eat...but uses it to mean i should eat. They also know shower, rain and the nsl for rain to mean bath. And home clearly means cage.

[@greasher926]

Has anyone considered creating a simple conlang with sounds that both chimps (or other primates) and humans can make?

[@ddogg9255]

I've found dogs to be incredibly responsive to body language with a good comprehension of mood. They can tell by tone and facial expression much of what's going on in people's heads. Honestly most dogs have a higher EQ than I do, lmao

[@Didyouknowthatiexist]

This is so cool!!!❤❤❤

[@LoStFoReVeRiNtImE]

Can you make a video about afro asiatic languages

[@rrrosecarbinela]

Fascinating!

[@Mikelaxo]

I wonder if anyone has ever tried creating a conlang with phonology that the target animal can easily produce

[@Vgn1701]

Thank you so much, this was so damn interesting!

[@DaDudeb]

Wasn't "Kluger Hans" debunked?

[@krankarvolund7771]

Most of the animals evoked in that video were debunked, that's why the next part is about how bad their grammar is ^^

[@YOSSARIAN313]

Short answer no Long answer also no

[@fernbedek6302]

Waiting for the next video where some of the dismissals of animal speech will be things that would also dismiss good chunks of human communication…

[@Plexi_64-jq4sr]

well..I didnt start to watch but it must be marvelous... like always, cuz ıts made by nativelang...

[@mattkuhn6634]

Great episode as always! That said, I find myself a little...I want to say unsettled? That's not quite right, though. My issue is that, as a linguist, I'm a bit bothered by the fact that you did not directly address that several of these animals you've mentioned have not just had doubt cast on them, but been outright debunked and shown to be frauds. I don't think your choice to not do so is indefensible by any means. It's a perfectly valid structure for the episodes in sequence, and you do hint several times at issues coming in the next episode. I'm certain that you are as well aware as I am at least about those issues, and I'm equally certain that anyone who watches that next episode will come away with the right impression. Where I get hung up though is that I think we have to consider what happens if someone comes here and only watches this one video, nothing else. Given the presentation, I think it's reasonable to conclude that a viewer might come away thinking "hey, here's a dozen or so examples of animals that can understand and produce human speech. Sure there may be a few issues with them here and there, but look at what they can do!" Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not calling for you to take down the video or make any edits. If my hypothetical person who just watches this video googles the examples I'm talking about, they'll find plenty of sources for their issues, and the risk of harm if this video maybe causes a handful of people to come away with the wrong impression isn't big. This is just an issue at the margins of ethics, it's not clear if one way or another is "right" or not, and I think that makes it worth discussing.

[@Skobeloff...]

Humans are animals.

[@shameonyou1681]

JEFF THE TALKING MONGOOSE MENTIONNNNNNNNNNN

[@andyjay729]

Earlier this year I read "The Genius of Birds" by Jennifer Ackerman, which I would recommend to anyone with an interest in animal intelligence. While the book obviously contains an extensive list of what the author believes to be feats of avian intelligence, early on Jennifer raises the question of how exactly we should define intelligence. Does it have to parallel human feats? Animals obviously interact with the world differently from us, with the differences compounding the more different they are from our body plan. If you want to compare brains to computers, a dolphin might have as much "processing power" as us, but they run on a completely different "OS". Some of you may have heard of the "Monogatari" anime series, and the character Tsubasa Hanekawa. She's often thought of as an all-knowing genius by the rest of the cast, and responds to such remarks by saying, "I don't know everything; I just know what I know." To me that kinda sums up animal intelligence, whether with a brainy animal like a crow or dolphin or a supposedly dumb one like a turkey; they just know what they need to know to live in their niche. I'm not saying communication between humans and animals is impossible, but in training animals to use human languages and symbols, it seems more like the animals are putting in the most work.

[@BrooklyKnight]

I wouldn't say "language" is uniquely human at all. The way we use language, maybe. But other species have their own way of language-ing, we just do it our way.

[@tombouie]

Thks & a simple question; 1st It seems science especially physics (ex: concepts) are least different across all languages. Sooooooo ??Would the quick means to start a language is to focus-on science concepts/terminology within it??

[@GhostOnTheHalfShell]

mmmm love this

[@Scrub18yt]

Native lang is back!

[@b43xoit]

Whom do you mean by "we"?

[@Arviragus13]

I honestly don't get how some of this stuff is considered as 'not language-y enough'. I mean, we live using it every day, and have longer life spans than many other species. We've been living in a world of complex communication for thousands of years, whereas the animals we try to teach our languages to don't have a need for that complexity. Simple language is still language, and I think that's an important point when we consider monkeys that live in a different way with less need for complex and abstract communication

[@DefaultFlame]

Ah, dolphins. I wonder if he will mention IT. Edit: He didn't mention IT.

[@chrisray9653]

I'm glad Chomsky stopped writing political books and went back to writing about linguistics in his 90s.

[@colireg]

fascinating

[@collaide]

i love your channel so much. i will become a small time donor on patreon tomorrow.

[@bigcat5348]

uh oh not the dolphins (iykyk)

[@woodchuck003]

Back in the day when Coco was in the news all the time I always thought it weird that nobody wanted to question why a chimpanzee needed a new pet cat every few weeks.

[@Amanda-C.]

... Are you talking about Koko the gorilla?

[@woodchuck003]

@@Amanda-C. Thank you for the correction, I was a tad off.

[@Catlily5]

Koko only had 2 cats. The first one got hit by a car (allegedly). But she certainly was not getting a new cat every few weeks.

[@woodchuck003]

@@Catlily5 I look at the wiki page it it's say the gorilla had Ball, Lips, Smokey, Miss Black, Miss Grey. So the Guerilla hade at least 5.

[@Catlily5]

@@woodchuck003 I looked it up. You are correct that she had 5 cats. The site I looked at was wrong. However, she got her first cat All Ball in 1983. It died in 1984 Allegedly it escaped the enclosure and was hit by a car. She got Lips in 1984 or 1985. Smoky - ??. The last 2 cats Miss Gray and Miss Black she got together in 2015. There is no evidence that she killed any cats. And having 5 cats in a 20+ period is very different than killing them off every couple of weeks. She would have gone through hundreds of cats.

[@koimismenos2685]

❤

[@redrum0127]

give white cheese

[@abrvalg321]

This video is unreasonable optimistic, ignoring every single criticism of those "language" uses. Hans was looking at people to visually tell when to stop, chimps were constantly begging for food and attention. I've haven't seen anything impressive by dogs and dolphins and you have not provided it either. The worst part is that "researchers" just cherry pick and interpret what they want. But when you have a full, uncut footage you can see that animals can't use language.

[@sarahlynn7807]

What a weird way to release this video. This video spends the entire time giving the positive claims for animal human communication with no depth or pushback, but also hints at the next video very slightly having the critiques. Everyone who already knows about this field though knows the entire next video will have to be about absolutely trashing almost all the examples in this video. Starting with Clever Hans and only hinting at the future problem only works if you already know the story. Instead you have left the ignorant viewers with a false sense that these are all equally good examples, because you barely touched on the negativity. Even the comments here are showing exactly that problem with naive posters all high on hopium that this will prove many animals can communicate with humans. Ending on Nim Chimpsky this way only hints at a minor issue, when in reality he basically was the starting point of disproving almost all of these examples (at least the ones I know). The rest of us, know the next video will be absolutely trashing the very field, deservedly. I think it is genuinely misleading and bad practice not to just release both videos at once or make one larger video. Deceiving the audience for a cheap trick and pull to the next video is not good science communication. I've followed your channel for a long time now and this video has been incredibly disappointing and borderline deceiving. There's a famous saying that a lie spreads around the world before the truth has its shoes on. What you've done is set up a misleading video highly implying and bordering a lie with the subtle plan to release the truth (retractions?) later. And considering the speed at which your videos come out I do not have high hopes. There are so many ways to do these two videos without leading to these dangerous misleading assumptions that producing it this way will and has already (again see comment sections). I genuinely think you should remove this video from your channel and release it again later with the next video at a minimum. Or re-edit both videos to have an actual back and fourth discussion. Or just remove this video and release both videos as a longer video. The exact people that are going to fall for this misdirection are the exact people that may not watch the next video, may not understand your implications, and may share this video unthinkingly with 0 follow up. You have cemented in the minds of plenty enough that this is the entire conversation to be had and there will be no follow up from those people. As a creator this is your responsibility, for the good of your viewers and for the good of science communication as a whole. Please do better.

[@adrianblake8876]

It's hinted that Clever Hans was thoroughly debunked because some critiques are found in the illustration of the files, and one of the critiques is "Clever Hans"... BTW, everyone knows about Clever Hans, because it gave birth to "double blindness" in experiments... But reading into others expectations and acting upon them is clever in itself...

[@rdklkje13]

I'm sorry about whichever science communication experiences you've had that have led you to write this post. I've read all of the currently 118 comments here and I do not see the trend you note, i.e. scores of "naive posters all high on hopium that this will prove many animals can communicate with humans". What I see are comments that fall into three broad categories: 1) More than half (estimate, I haven't actually counted them) explicitly reflect an awareness that most of the cases included in this video have highly problematic aspects, with some - like Clever Hans - having been shown to be completely fake. This awareness was also clear in the video, from my perspective, and is mentioned in the description. It may indeed be so that these mentions aren't as clear to people who do not already know about the problematic aspects of these cases, I find that hard to judge. 2) A number of comments are more general musings about the nature of language and linguistic fields. Again, most of these do not reflect naïvety or incredulity as far as I can tell. 3) The last major comment category that I discern here contains comments from people about how they or others communicate with their pets and other animals. Maybe these are the comments you have in mind? Again, I do not see people claiming that these examples of interspecies communication amount to language use by all participants, or that these animals can grammar when communicating within their own species (I am so gonna help turn 'grammar' into a verb 😆). And the question of whether the various ways in which these animals communicate can be considered grammatical is what this video series is about. It's not about whether humans and certain animals can communicate with each other at all, something which has been well-established for a very long time. In other words, I find your assertion that "You [@NativLang] have cemented in the minds of plenty enough that this is the entire conversation to be had" to be completely unfounded. @mattkuhn6634 writes elsewhere in this comments section that, while splitting extended coverage of a topic into discrete chapters is a perfectly valid editorial strategy, it is one worth discussing. And I do agree with that. Many people these days will indeed only watch one video and not bother with the next chapters, especially if, as you note, those chapters aren't immediately available. But in my experience, most of the time it doesn't matter a whole lot whether you include the problematic aspects and debunking information straight away in cases like that. People who aren't interested enough in a topic to watch a follow-up, or who have pre-conceived ideas about it that they aren't particularly willing to change, will take away from any video what they want to take away from it. Admittedly, most of my experience with science communication is in the field of anthropogenic wrecking of this planet's biosphere, so that may exacerbate this tendency.

[@sarahlynn7807]

@@adrianblake8876 "Everybody knows the rest of the information" is not a convincing argument on an education channel presenting incomplete information to viewers. No many viewers don't know about the Clever Hans fraud. It's a niche subject that I don't even think is in most curriculums across the world.

[@adrianblake8876]

@@sarahlynn7807 I don't know who you're quoting, certainly not me, as I didn't say this phrase in my comment... What I said was the video hints at "Clever Hans" being debunked, not that this is, or should be, prior knowledge of the viewer...

[@Malekith227]

I agree completely. That's not how good science communication is done and almost made me unsubscribe. We know from the scientific literature how misinformation spread, video like that should not exist. The "I read the whole comment section"in a comment section numbered in the hundred and the views on the video in the ten of thousands is the very example of the selection bias.

[@1541961902mc]

bro wrote a who dissertation

[@lenyaeger9969]

WHEN DID "GRAMMAR" BECOME A VERB?

[@angelodc1652]

"Verbing weirds language" -Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes

[@resourceress7]

Anytime you want. Language play is a big part of language fluency. And fun :)

[@faenethlorhalien]

Judging from the title, maybe we should teach you grammar first ;)))

[@Yesica1993]

There's no such thing as "non-human animals." So, no, they cannot "talk in any grammatically meaningful way." Animals are animals. People are people. Good grief.

[@ax14pz107]

People are animals. That is just a fact.

[@pallasproserpina4118]

humans are, biologically, animals. and the discussion of whether or not other animals can use language is exactly the point of this series. why so dismissive?

[@hauthesun]

L take

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

Did you even watch the video? or are you just here to show off how underfunded your school was? (Sorry if your a kid. If so, I hope your life gets better)

[@adrianblake8876]

Are dogs animals? Yes Are they human? No Therefore they're a non-human animal. Even if you think "non-human animal" makes as much sense as "non-round polygons" the fact is all polygons are non-round...