Animal Language
Humans aren’t the only mammals with the ability to learn or use complex language. Research into the fascinating field of animal language, or animal linguistics, is constantly developing. We’re so excited about this research topic that we’ve collected all the best resources and studies to help you become an expert in the field!
Here’s what we’ve gathered for you:
Articles
- 🌟Our hand-picked collection of articles and research on animal linguistics.
- We highly recommend you start by reading this paper on animal linguistics. It’ll give you a good background on the subject, including relevant terminology.
- Then, read through the linguistic research on Yana and Yasha, two Black Sea bottlenose dolphins. Find the study here. If you don’t have time for the full article, we have the abstract here. When you’re finished, check out this article discussing the study.
- Next, read this study on sperm whale communication, and then follow up with this National Geographic article that discusses it.
- On the topic of whales, check out this study on a killer whale named Wikie who imitated human speech, and then read this article discussing it.
- We also recommend reading this super interesting article on orangutan communication.
Spotify
- Why Do Animals Have Regional Accents? This is an episode of WHY? It features Élodie F. Briefer, Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
YouTube
- How to speak monkey: The language of cotton-top tamarins – Anne Savage, Ted-Ed. Here’s the description taken from the video on YouTube: The cotton-top tamarin is a very vocal monkey — the species communicates using a sophisticated language of 38 distinct and grammatically structured calls! Anne Savage teaches a few of these chirps and whistles, taking us through a day in the life of Shakira the tamarin (using sounds pulled from the wild) as Shakira signals to her family, talks to her food and warns against potential predators.