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Fri 8 Apr, 2005 06:18 pm
This is an intriguing article, and I had read something of this research earlier.
Does anyone know more about this person's research, especially critiques of it, or places where I can find out more?
I confess to finding this very interesting.
Language of Prairie Dogs Includes Words for Humans
By Tania Soussan
Associated Press
posted: 06 December 2004
10:19 am ET
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) _ Prairie dogs, those little pups popping in and out of holes on vacant lots and rural rangeland, are talking up a storm. They have different "words'' for tall human in yellow shirt, short human in green shirt, coyote, deer, red-tailed hawk and many other creatures.
They can even coin new terms for things they've never seen before, independently coming up with the same calls or words, according to Con Slobodchikoff, a Northern Arizona University biology professor and prairie dog linguist.
Prairie dogs of the Gunnison's species, which Slobodchikoff has studied, speak different dialects in Grants and Taos, N.M.; Flagstaff, Ariz.; and Monarch Pass, Colo., but they would likely understand one another, the professor says.
"So far, I think we are showing the most sophisticated communication system that anyone has shown in animals,'' Slobodchikoff said.
Slobodchikoff has spent the last two decades studying prairie dogs and their calls, mostly in Arizona, but also in New Mexico and Colorado.
Prairie dog chatter is variously described by observers as a series of yips, high-pitched barks or eeks. And most scientists think prairie dogs simply make sounds that reflect their inner condition. That means all they're saying are things like "ouch'' or "hungry'' or "eek.''
But Slobodchikoff believes prairie dogs are communicating detailed information to one another about what animals are showing up in their colonies, and maybe even gossiping.
Linguists have set five criteria that must be met for something to qualify as language: It must contain words with abstract meanings; possess syntax in which the order of words is part of their meaning; have the ability to coin new words; be composed of smaller elements; and use words separated in space and time from what they represent.
"I've been chipping away at all of these,'' Slobodchikoff said.
He and his students have done work in the field and in a laboratory. With digital recorders, they record the calls prairie dogs make as they see different people, dogs of different sizes and with different coat colors, hawks, elk. They analyze the sounds using a computer that dissects the underlying structure and creates a sonogram, or visual representation of the sound. Computer analysis later identifies the similarities and differences.
The prairie dogs have calls for various predators but also for elk, deer, antelope and cows.
"It's as if they're trying to inform one another what's out there,'' Slobodchikoff said.
So far, he has recorded at least 20 different "words.''
Some of those words or calls were created by the prairie dogs when they saw something for the first time. Four prairie dogs in Slobodchikoff's lab were shown a great-horned owl and European ferret, two animals they had likely not seen before, if only because the owls are mostly nocturnal and this kind of ferret is foreign. The prairie dogs independently came up with the same new calls.
In the field, black plywood cutouts showing the silhouette of a coyote, a skunk and an oval shape were randomly run along a wire through the prairie dog colony.
"There are no black ovals running around out there and yet they all had the same word for black oval,'' Slobodchikoff said.
He guesses the prairie dogs are genetically programmed with some vocabulary and the ability to describe things.
Slobodchikoff has also played back a recorded prairie dog alarm call for coyote in a prairie dog colony when no coyote was around. The prairie dogs had the same escape response as they did when the predator was really there.
"There's no coyote present, but the prairie dogs hear this and they say, 'Oh, coyote. Better hide,''' Slobodchikoff said.
Computer analysis has been able to break down some prairie dog calls into different components, suggesting the critters have yet another element of a real language.
"We're chipping away with this at the idea that animals don't have language,'' Slobodchikoff said.
I camped at Devils Tower about two years ago and on the other side of a creek (what Wyoming calls a river) from the campground was a huge prairie dog town. I was told it had a population of about 2,000,000. Anywho's I seemed to be sleeping across from the prairie dogtown tenderloin.
Let me tell you, I couldn't sleep a wink. prairie Dog bikers trash everywhere, loud and obnoxious riding back and fourth and fourth and back, straight pipes blaring almost endlessly. Finally, it waxed for a few minutes and then this Braap. Braap, RNNNNNN at about 110 dBs for a solid five minutes. And when it shut down, one prairie dog would yell at his deaf compadre ----"Man did ja hear them valves Float"--only to be followed by a chorus of "Woo Woo Woo baby show me them tits" echoed my a shrill "Show me your dick!" Then Whoops, Guffaws, and Screams.
I didn't hear them prairie dog talk too much about them long pigs trying to sleep across the creek, but then I wasn't camped across the up side of prairie dog town." Which I assumed would have would have quieter conversations on the back decks of the prairie dogtown suburbia.
Rap
I am somewhat disturbed that raprap does not seem to be taking my question ENTIRELY seriously.
However, that is a most interesting...er...rap, raprap.
My memory ain't what it usedta be (never was, in fact), but I seem to recall that there was a thread on this very subject on A2K about a year ago.
Oh, indeed?
Can you recall its whereabouts, Merry Andrew?
Perhaps it had better commerce than this forlorn specimen of the genre?
Prospero wrote:Oh, indeed?
Can you recall its whereabouts, Merry Andrew?
Sorry, Prospero. I'd have to go culling through a couple of thousand threads to find it. Being computer semi-literate, I don't know the fast way to do it. Maybe someone else here remembers it?
Well, I'll try the search function. But in the meantime, I find the information fascinating, and also enjoyed Raprap's rap.
MeerKats not only look but seem to have a similar ethology to prairie dogs.
Since, Prairie Dogs (like MeerKats) are somewhere in the middle of the food chain and have very social ethics, I would expect to find conversations about survival would also be social (and descriptive).
So I would have expected my biker Prairie dog buds in the Prairie dogtown tenderloin to earn their upper middle class causins in the Prairie dogtown surburbs about this redbearded ape wreaking havoc in Prairie dogtown, as necessary.
Rap
Here's a post on it by Dlowan in the Do Primates Have Culture thread -
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22296&start=210
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