7
votes
Accepted
Are there any animals that are unable to hear the human voice?
Are there (apart from those with no sense of hearing at all) any
animals that are unable to hear human voices at all?
I don't know of any examples off the top of my head, but let's think about this ...
- 6,272
6
votes
Can multiple cetacean species communicate?
Do dogs and humans communicate? What about cats and dogs? I think defining "communicate" is the real question here.
This 2012 study claims to show "the first experimental evidence that the ...
- 126
4
votes
How do fish communicate?
There are a variety of fish species that produce sounds, including many species of Bocaccio (i.e. rockfish). This article is a great resource for learning more about 'fish choruses', a phenomenon ...
- 337
4
votes
Accepted
Why should the pharyngeal cavity be essential for articulated speech?
This bit of the book Developmental Neuropsychiatry: Fundamentals describes the difference between the oral cavity in humans and other animals. It doesn't refer to Homo habilis in this context, but it ...
- 3,253
4
votes
Are there birds that don't vocalize?
There are birds with non-vocal sound only. However, there might not be any bird without producing any sound. Thus, all birds appear to have some way of acoustic communication.
A better known example ...
- 1,127
4
votes
Accepted
Can platypuses communicate via electroreception?
Electrocommunication is used by weakly electric fish only and it is limited to aquatic environments where the electrical conductivity of the medium allows to transmit electric signals. The best ...
- 1,127
3
votes
Accepted
Waggle dance in the dark
In bees that dance in the dark (not all do, some dance in the light) they don't watch the dance, they participate. The follow the dancer using their antenna and sound to keep track of them.
Beehives ...
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2
votes
Is there such thing as Animal non-verbal body language?
Darwin wrote a classical book on the subject, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and [other] Animals. Among other things, he showed how opposite emotions cause opposite movements. For instance, ...
- 1,300
2
votes
How do fish communicate?
I second MZiegenhorn's answer and Xavier Mouy's comment that a variety of fish species produce sounds, and I'll shamelessly refer you to our new website FishSounds for an inventory of published ...
- 191
2
votes
Have there been attempts to identify Chomsky's "language mutation" in humans?
To my knowledge, Chomsky does not claim that there is a specific gene or mutation responsible for the human linguistic abilities - at least not in strictly biological sense. The claims of Chomsky and ...
- 3,862
2
votes
Accepted
How exactly does symbolic language for apes work?
The best article I found was this one. In it it says among other things that:
Kanzi, an unusually intelligent Bonobo chimp trained at Georgia State
University, was remarkable in that he learned to ...
- 590
2
votes
Accepted
Do ants know the direct (approximately shortest) path to their nest from the food morsel?
Terms that may help you research are dead reckoning or path integration. From Wikipedia:
In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating one's current position by using a previously ...
- 46.5k
2
votes
Are there animals which produce sound through direct muscular oscillation?
Bees.
Research has been done into their waggle dance. Bearing in mind that inside the hive there are very low light levels, and that only a certain number of bees can be in direct physical contact ...
- 1,987
1
vote
Accepted
Do animals lie?
This question has been well studied by cognitive scientists who are interested in which aspects of complex human behavior are also exhibited by animals.
The only real problem here is that the word &...
- 6,997
1
vote
Do humans secrete and detect pheremones?
Yes, humans can secrete and sense pheromones, e.g. female tears dampen male sexual arousal.
Science 2011, 331(6014), 226-230
But then on the other hand, a key gene in mouse sex specific behavior (...
- 695
1
vote
Light signals in the courtship and mating
Many Ostracods (esp. the Cyprididae) use bioluminescence to attract mates. The Bermuda fireworm (a polychete worm) also uses bioluminescence to attract mates.
If you have not yet, you should ...
- 68.3k
1
vote
Is there such thing as Animal non-verbal body language?
Animals most definitely can communicate through body language! It sounds like you have a good idea of some methods through which they communicate easily noticeable to humans. To give you an ...
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