Communication between animals of different species. Communication in animals and insects Communication in animals general characteristics and features

All animals have to get food, defend themselves, guard the boundaries of their territory, look for marriage partners, and take care of their offspring. For a normal life, each individual needs accurate information about everything that surrounds it. This information is obtained through systems and means of communication. Animals receive communication signals and other information about the outside world through physical and chemical senses.

In most taxonomic groups of animals, all sense organs are present and function simultaneously; depending on their anatomical structure and lifestyle, the functional roles of the systems differ. Sensory systems complement each other well and provide complete information to a living organism about environmental factors. At the same time, in the event of a complete or partial failure of one or even several of them, the remaining systems strengthen and expand their functions, thereby compensating for the lack of information. For example, blind and deaf animals are able to navigate their environment using their sense of smell and touch. It is well known that deaf and mute people easily learn to understand the speech of their interlocutor by the movement of his lips, and blind people - to read using their fingers.

Depending on the degree of development of certain sense organs in animals, they can be used when communicating. different ways communications. Thus, in the interactions of many invertebrates, as well as some vertebrates that lack eyes, tactile communication dominates. Many invertebrates have specialized tactile organs, such as the antennae of insects, often equipped with chemoreceptors. Due to this, their sense of touch is closely related to chemical sensitivity. Because of physical properties aquatic environment, its inhabitants communicate with each other mainly through visual and sound signals. The communication systems of insects are quite diverse, especially their chemical communication. The most great importance they have for social insects, whose social organization can rival that of human society.

Fish use at least three types of communication signals: auditory, visual and chemical, often combining them.

Although amphibians and reptiles have all the sensory organs characteristic of vertebrates, their forms of communication are relatively simple.

Bird communications reach a high level of development, with the exception of chemocommunication, which is present in literally a few species. When communicating with individuals of their own, as well as other species, including mammals and even humans, birds use mainly audio as well as visual signals. Thanks to the good development of the auditory and vocal apparatus, birds have excellent hearing and are able to produce many different sounds. Schooling birds use a greater variety of sound and visual signals than solitary birds. They have signals that gather the flock, notify about danger, signals “everything is calm” and even calls for a meal. In the communication of terrestrial mammals, quite a lot of space is occupied by information about emotional states - fear, anger, pleasure, hunger and pain.

However, this far from exhausts the content of communications - even in non-primate animals.

Animals wandering in groups, through visual signals, maintain the integrity of the group and warn each other about danger; bears, within their territory, peel off the bark on tree trunks or rub against them, thus informing about the size of their body and gender; skunks and a number of other animals secrete odorous substances for protection or as sexual attractants; male deer organize ritual tournaments to attract females during the rutting season; wolves express their attitude by aggressive growling or friendly tail wagging; seals in rookeries communicate using calls and special movements; angry bear coughs threateningly.

Mammalian communication signals were developed for communication between individuals of the same species, but often these signals are also perceived by individuals of other species that are nearby. In Africa, the same spring is sometimes used for watering at the same time by different animals, for example, wildebeest, zebra and waterbuck. If a zebra, with its keen sense of hearing and smell, senses the approach of a lion or other predator, its actions alert neighbors at the watering hole, and they react accordingly. In this case, interspecific communication takes place.

Man uses his voice to communicate to an immeasurably greater extent than any other primate. For greater expressiveness, words are accompanied by gestures and facial expressions. Other primates use signal postures and movements in communication much more often than we do, and use their voice much less often. These components of primate communication behavior are not innate - animals learn different ways of communicating as they grow older.

Raising cubs in wildlife based on imitation and the development of stereotypes; they are looked after most of the time and punished when necessary; they learn what's edible by watching their mothers and learn gestures and vocal communication mostly through trial and error. The assimilation of communicative behavioral stereotypes is a gradual process. The most interesting features of primate communication behavior are easier to understand when we consider the circumstances in which different types of signals are used - chemical, tactile, auditory and visual.

6.3.1. TACTIL SENSITIVITY. TOUCH

On the surface of the body of animals there is a huge number of receptors, which are the endings of sensory nerve fibers. Based on the nature of sensitivity, receptors are divided into pain, temperature (heat and cold) and tactile (mechanoreceptors).

The sense of touch is the ability of animals to perceive external influences carried out by receptors of the skin and musculoskeletal system.

The tactile sensation can be varied, as it arises as a result of the complex perception of the various properties of the stimulus acting on the skin and subcutaneous tissues. Through touch, the shape, size, temperature, consistency of the stimulus, position and movement of the body in space, etc. are determined. The basis of touch is the irritation of specialized receptors and the transformation of incoming signals in the central nervous system into the appropriate type of sensitivity (tactile, temperature, pain).

But the main receptors that perceive these irritations and partly the position of the body in space in mammals are hair, especially whiskers. Vibrissae react not only to touching surrounding objects, but also to air vibrations. In burrowers, which have a wide surface of contact with the walls of the burrow, the vibrissae, except for the head, are scattered throughout the body. In climbing forms, for example, squirrels and lemurs, they are also located on the ventral surface and on parts of the limbs that come into contact with the substrate when moving through trees.

The tactile sense is caused by irritation of mechanoreceptors (Pacini and Meissner corpuscles, Merkel discs, etc.) located in the skin at some distance from each other. Animals are able to quite accurately determine the location of irritations: insects crawling on the skin or their bites cause a sharp motor and defensive reaction. The highest concentration of receptors in most animals is observed in the head region; accordingly, areas of the scalp, mucous membranes of the oral cavity, lips, eyelids and tongue have the highest sensitivity to touch. In the first days of life of a baby mammal, the main tactile organ is the oral cavity. Touching the lips causes sucking movements in him.

Continuous exposure to mechano- and thermoreceptors leads to a decrease in their sensitivity, i.e. they quickly adapt to these factors. Skin sensitivity is closely related to internal organs(stomach, intestines, kidneys, etc.). So it is enough to irritate the skin in the stomach area to get increased acidity gastric juice.

When pain receptors are irritated, the resulting excitation is transmitted along sensory nerves to the cerebral cortex. In this case, incoming impulses are identified as emerging pain. The feeling of pain is of great importance: pain signals problems in the body. The threshold for excitation of pain receptors is species specific. So, in dogs it is slightly lower than, for example, in humans. Irritation of pain receptors causes reflex changes: increased release of adrenaline, increased blood pressure and other phenomena. When exposed to certain substances, such as novocaine, pain receptors are switched off. This is used to administer local anesthesia during operations.

Irritation of the skin's temperature receptors causes sensations of heat and cold. There are two types of thermoreceptors: cold and heat. Temperature receptors are distributed unevenly in different areas of the skin. In response to irritation of temperature receptors, the lumens of blood vessels reflexively narrow or widen, as a result of this, heat transfer changes, and the behavior of animals changes accordingly.

Apparently, the communication systems used by living things are almost universal. To reproduce, many plants attract the attention of pollinating animals (especially insects) with bright colors and pleasant odors. Once reproduction has occurred, plants turn to animals to disperse their seeds. To attract their attention, plants offer brightly colored edible fruits, which the animals eat. The seeds then pass through their digestive system.

If we define the act of communication as the transmission and receipt of information, then we can talk about this phenomenon only in relation to the animal kingdom, since plants do not have a nervous system and their communicative perception can at best be called limited. Animal communication systems involve modality in all respects. The oldest systems include chemical perception, such as smell. Single-celled organisms such as bacteria have been shown to respond to chemical traces left by other bacteria of the same species. The sense of smell plays a key role in courtship and mating in many species that use pheromones. Pheromones are chemical signals released by animals to attract a female or male and notify them that they are ready to breed. Olfactory cues also play a key role when it comes to marking territory, as dog owners can easily attest to. A dog, by urinating on various objects, leaves signs indicating that the area belongs to it and warning other dogs that they should stay away.

In the 1950s, ethologist Karl von Frisch discovered a phenomenon that was erroneously identified as “the language of bees” (von Frisch, 1971). After conducting a series of complex experiments, von Frisch found that bees searching for nectar convey information to their swarm about the location of new sources of nectar using the so-called “waddle dance” - moving in a “figure of eight” along the vertical surface of the honeycomb.

At the same time, the intensity of the swaying indicates the richness of the new nectar source, and the inclination of the “eight” in relation to the perpendicular indicates the location of this source relative to the sun. However, despite the complexity of this method, what bees do cannot be compared with real language. In this case, the information transmitted during the communicative act is extremely limited. Moreover, the use of such symbolism is not arbitrary and, apparently, is genetically fixed in the nervous system of bees. Thus, we can say that bees use a communication system; this type of behavior cannot be called language in the full sense of the word.

Information about complex, highly significant types of behavior, such as courtship or the reflex of defending one's territory, is transmitted in various ways. Birds sing to mark their territory and attract a mate. This does not mean that they deliberately use this type of behavior to achieve their goals. Singing is composed of certain signals, some of which are physiological, and its adaptive function is to mark the boundaries of the territory and attract mates. Birds also use visual signals, such as puffing, to convey the same information. Thus, red-winged blackbirds mark the boundaries of their territory with tufts of red feathers on their wings. If these bunches are blackened, the bird quickly loses all its territory. When it comes to dogs, visual cues are important for conveying information about the different moods they are in. A dog that steps on another with its hair raised on end and without bending its front legs is demonstrating an aggressive attitude.

A dog bowing in front of its partner, bending its paws, takes, on the contrary, an inviting position - it demonstrates obedience and readiness to take part in the game. Grunts and growls in dogs and other mammals almost always signal aggression and warning.

Darwin (1872) recognized that human facial expression is derived directly from these earlier signals of aggression or appeasement. Facial expression still serves as the main source of nonverbal information for us humans today. If we doubt the reliability of what we are told, we usually strive to see the expression on the face and eyes of the interlocutor in order to confirm the correctness of the information we received verbally.

Communication systems used by non-humans, but closest to human speech, are systems with vocal communication. Let us repeat once again that we can only talk about auditory forms of communication in relation to the animal kingdom. The study of primates, our closest relatives, provides a wealth of information about the pattern of language evolution during its development. African gray monkeys have been found to produce different vocalizations when encountering different types of predators (Cheney & Seyfarth, 1990). If the animal spots a leopard, it emits a special call - called the "leopard call" by biologists who study these monkeys - which serves as a signal for all other monkeys to run for the trees. If the “eagle cry” is heard, the reaction will be exactly the opposite - the monkeys will emerge from the crown of the tree and press themselves to the ground. If the monkeys hear the “snake’s cry,” they will rise on their hind legs and peer intently into the grass. Experiments with sound recordings also show that marmosets can distinguish the sounds made by individual individuals. They react differently to filmed sound signals produced by animals occupying a subordinate or dominant position. For example, if a monkey in a subordinate position screams, its cry is more likely to be ignored, in contrast to the same cry made by an animal in a dominant position. Sound signals have been found to play a subtle but significant role in social interaction in many other primate species. The assumption that these animals possessed rudiments of language abilities has led to serious attempts to teach primates language skills.

Animal communications. Like humans, animals live in a very complex world, filled with a lot of information and contacts with a variety of objects of animate and inanimate nature. Absolutely every population, be it insects, fish, birds or mammals, is not a random accumulation of individuals, but a completely ordered, organized system. Maintaining order and organization arises as a result of the clash of interests of individual animals, each of which determines its place and position in the overall system, focusing on its fellow animals. To do this, animals must be able to communicate to their peers about their needs and the possibilities of achieving them. Therefore, each species must have certain ways of transmitting information. These are different ways of signaling, which, by analogy with our own, can be conventionally called “language”.

Animal language is a rather complex concept and is not limited only to the sound communication channel. The language of postures and body movements plays an important role in the exchange of information. A bared mouth, raised fur, extended claws, a threatening growl or hiss are quite convincing evidence of the animal’s aggressive intentions. The ritual mating dance of birds is a complex system postures and body movements that convey information of a completely different kind to the partner. In such animal language, for example, the tail and ears play a huge role. Their numerous characteristic positions indicate subtle nuances of the owner’s moods and intentions, the meaning of which is not always clear to the observer, although obvious to the animal’s relatives.

The most important element of the language of animals is the language of smells. To be convinced of this, it is enough to watch a dog going out for a walk: with what concentrated attention and thoroughness it sniffs all the pillars and trees that have the marks of other dogs, and leaves its own on top of them. Many animals have special glands that secrete a strong-smelling substance specific to this species, traces of which the animal leaves in the places where it stays and thereby marks the boundaries of its territory.

Finally, sound language has a very special meaning for animals. In order to receive information through the language of postures and body movements, animals must see each other. The language of smells suggests that the animal is close to the place where another animal is or has been. The advantage of the language of sounds is that it allows animals to communicate without seeing each other, for example, in complete darkness and at a long distance. Thus, the trumpet voice of a deer calling a friend and challenging an opponent to battle can be heard for many kilometers. The most important feature of animal language is its emotional nature. The alphabet of this language includes exclamations such as: “Attention!”, “Caution, danger!”, “Save yourself who can!”, “Get away!” and so on. Another feature of animal language is the dependence of signals on the situation. Many animals have only a dozen or two sound signals in their vocabulary. For example, the American yellow-bellied marmot has only 8 of them. But with the help of these signals, marmots are able to communicate to each other much more information than information about eight possible situations, since each signal in different situations will say something different. The semantic meaning of most animal signals is probabilistic, depending on the situation.

Thus, the language of most animals is a set of specific signals - sound, olfactory, visual, etc., which act in a given situation and involuntarily reflect the state of the animal at a given specific moment.

The bulk of animal signals transmitted through the channels of the main types of communication do not have a direct addressee. In this way, the natural languages of animals are fundamentally different from the language of humans, which functions under the control of consciousness and will.

Animal language signals are strictly specific to each species and are genetically determined. They are generally the same in all individuals of a given species, and their set is practically not subject to expansion. The signals used by animals of most species are quite diverse and numerous.

However, all their diversity in different species semantic meaning fits into approximately 10 main categories:

signals intended for sexual partners and possible competitors;

signals that ensure the exchange of information between parents and offspring;

cries of alarm;

messages about food availability;

signals that help maintain contact between pack members;

"switch" signals designed to prepare the animal for the action of subsequent stimuli, the so-called metacommunication. Thus, the “invitation to play” pose characteristic of dogs precedes play fighting, accompanied by play aggressiveness;

“intention” signals that precede any reaction: for example, birds make special movements with their wings before taking off;

signals associated with the expression of aggression;

signals of peacefulness;

signals of dissatisfaction (frustration).

Most animal signals are strictly species-specific, but among them there are some that can be quite informative for representatives of other species. These are, for example, alarm calls, messages about the presence of food or signals of aggression.

Along with this, animal signals are very specific, that is, they signal to relatives about something specific. Animals distinguish each other well by their voices, the female recognizes the male and the cubs, and they, in turn, perfectly distinguish the voices of their parents. However, unlike human speech, which has the ability to convey endless amounts of complex information not only of a concrete but also of an abstract nature, the language of animals is always concrete, that is, it signals a specific environment or state of the animal. This is the fundamental difference between animal language and human speech, the properties of which are predetermined by the unusually developed abilities of the human brain for abstract thinking.

Communication systems used by animals, I.P. Pavlov named the first alarm system. He emphasized that this system is common to animals and humans, since to obtain information about the world around us, humans use virtually the same communication systems.

In most taxonomic groups of animals, all sense organs are present and function simultaneously. However, depending on their anatomical structure and lifestyle, the functional role of different systems turns out to be different. Sensory systems complement each other well and provide complete information to a living organism about environmental factors. At the same time, in the event of a complete or partial failure of one or even several of them, the remaining systems strengthen and expand their functions, thereby compensating for the lack of information. For example, blind and deaf animals are able to navigate their environment using their sense of smell and touch. It is well known that deaf and mute people easily learn to understand the speech of their interlocutor by the movement of his lips, and blind people - to read using their fingers.

Depending on the degree of development of certain sense organs in animals, different methods of communication can be used when communicating. Thus, in the interactions of many invertebrates, as well as some vertebrates that lack eyes, tactile communication dominates. Due to the physical properties of the aquatic environment, its inhabitants communicate with each other mainly through visual and audio signals.

Fish use at least three types of communication signals: auditory, visual and chemical, often combining them. Although amphibians and reptiles have all the sensory organs characteristic of vertebrates, their forms of communication are relatively simple. Bird communications reach a high level of development, with the exception of chemocommunication, which is present in literally a few species. When communicating with individuals of their own, as well as other species, including mammals and even humans, birds use mainly audio as well as visual signals. Thanks to the good development of the auditory and vocal apparatus, birds have excellent hearing and are able to produce many different sounds. Schooling birds use a greater variety of sound and visual signals than solitary birds. They have signals that gather the flock, notify about danger, signals “everything is calm” and even calls for a meal. In the communication of terrestrial mammals, quite a lot of space is occupied by information about emotional states - fear, anger, pleasure, hunger and pain.

However, this far from exhausts the content of communications - even in non-primate animals.

Animals wandering in groups, through visual signals, maintain the integrity of the group and warn each other about danger;

bears, within their territory, peel off the bark on tree trunks or rub against them, thus informing about the size of their body and gender;

skunks and a number of other animals secrete odorous substances for protection or as sexual attractants;

male deer organize ritual tournaments to attract females during the rutting season; wolves express their attitude by aggressive growling or friendly tail wagging;

seals in rookeries communicate using calls and special movements;

angry bear coughs threateningly.

Raising cubs in the wild is based on imitation and the development of stereotypes; they are looked after most of the time and punished when necessary; they learn what's edible by watching their mothers and learn gestures and vocal communication mostly through trial and error. The assimilation of communicative behavioral stereotypes is a gradual process. The most interesting features of primate communication behavior are easier to understand when we consider the circumstances in which different types of signals are used - chemical, tactile, auditory and visual.

Studying the origins of human language is impossible without studying the communication systems of animals - otherwise we will not be able to identify either what is new in humans in comparison with animals, or those properties useful for the development of language that already existed at the beginning of its evolution. Failure to take into account factors of this kind weakens the hypotheses put forward. For example, T. Deacon assigns a key role in the origin of language to the use of signs and symbols (his book is called “The symbolic species”, “Symbolic species” 1 ) - but since many animals also show the ability to use them (and, as we will see below, not only under experimental conditions), the use of symbols is not suitable for the role of the main driving force of glottogenesis.

However, the study of animal communication is needed not only to reject such hypotheses. The current state of science allows us to pose deeper questions: what correlates with the presence of certain characteristics in a communication system? What directions of evolution of communication systems exist and how can they be determined?

First of all, it is necessary to understand that behind the word “animals” lies a huge number of very different creatures, some of which are close to humans to such an extent that it is meaningful to raise the question of those properties necessary for communication that their common ancestor possessed, while others are so far away , that the common ancestors certainly could not have had any properties relevant for communication. Thus, one should distinguish between “homologies” and “analogies” - the first term refers to properties that developed from the common heritage inherited from a common ancestor, the second - characteristics that, being externally similar, developed independently during evolution. For example, the presence of two pairs of limbs in humans and crocodile is homology, and the streamlined body shape of fish, dolphins and ichthyosaurs is of a similar nature.

Rice. 4.1. Comparison of language with communication systems of other types according to the criteria of Charles Hockett 2 .

When, according to the criteria proposed by Charles Hockett, language was compared with the communicative systems of several different species of animals (stickleback, herring gull, bee and gibbon), it turned out that the communication system of the honey bee had the most similarities with language ( Apis mellifera). The wagging dance of bees has properties such as productivity and mobility; it is a specialized communicative action; those who can produce signals of this type can also understand them (the latter is called the “interchangeability property”). To some extent, in the dance of bees one can even see the arbitrariness of the sign: the same element of wagging dance in a German bee indicates a distance of 75 meters to the food source, in an Italian bee - 25 meters, and in a bee from Egypt - only five 3 . Accordingly, this communication system is (at least partly) learnable - as experiments by Nina Georgievna Lopatina showed 4 , a bee raised in isolation and not having the opportunity to observe the dances of adult individuals does not understand the meaning of the dance and cannot “read” the transmitted information from it. From a formal point of view, the dances of bees can be distinguished by elementary components (see below), different combinations of which make up different meanings (just as in human language different combinations of phonemes give different words) 5 .

Certain analogies can be seen between human language and the communication systems of some species of ants. As the experiments of Zh.I. showed. Reznikova (see photo 16 on the inset), conducted with carpenter ants Camponotus herculeanus, their signaling has the property of productivity and the property of movement: ants are able to inform their relatives about various locations of food. At the same time, they can compress information: a path like “all the time to the right” is described shorter than a path like “left, then right, right again, then left and then right.” Information about the same, well-known place is transmitted faster than about another. Although the communication system of ants cannot be directly deciphered, this analogy shows that such properties seem to inevitably arise in a communication system that must ensure the transfer of a large amount of various information.

As noted by Zh.I. Reznikov, the use of different types of information transmission by different types of ants is associated with their lifestyle and the tasks that they have to solve. Those species in which the family size is no more than several hundred individuals do not need a developed sign system: the required amount of food can be collected at a distance of two to three meters from the nest, “and at such a distance an odorous trail works well.” 6 . On the contrary, in those species that live huge families and collect food, moving away from the nest at a considerable distance, there are communication systems with rich expressive capabilities.

For spoken speech, formant differences are of great importance - first of all, it is by them (and not, say, by loudness, duration or pitch of the fundamental tone) that we distinguish different phonemes from each other. But the ability to use formant differences is also present in animals. As T. Fitch testifies, species that use sound communication - for example, green monkeys (vervet monkeys), Japanese macaques, cranes - are able to distinguish formants no worse than humans 7 . Even frogs have special detectors tuned to those frequencies that are especially important for each particular species. Formant differences can be used, in particular, to distinguish conspecifics from each other 8 , to recognize different types of danger signals, etc.

Many analogues in the animal kingdom have the human capacity for recursion. The simplest (at least from a human point of view) thought process that requires the use of recursion is counting: each next number is one more than the previous one. But, as studies have shown, not only people can count 9 , but also chimpanzees (special experiments conducted in Kyoto under the leadership of Tetsuro Matsuzawa are devoted to this, in particular 10 ), parrots 11 , crows 12 and ants 13 . In the experiments of Z.A. Zorina and A.A. Smirnova showed that gray crows can add numbers within 4 (and even operate with ordinary “Arabic” numerals); ants in the experiments of Zh.I. Reznikova demonstrated the ability to “add and subtract within 5” 14 . Rhesus monkeys (in the experiments of American researchers Elizabeth Brannon and Herbert Terrace) “counted” (by sequentially touching images of groups with different numbers of objects on the screen) in ascending and descending order from 1 to 4 and from 5 to 9 15 .

The most developed analogy is between human language and the song of songbirds (this is one of the suborders of the passerine order). The song is divided into syllables - individual spectral events that have a more sonorous peak and less sonorous edges. Each individual syllable, like a phoneme, does not have its own meaning, but their sequence adds up to a song that carries a certain meaning. To recognize a song, it is essential that the syllables appear in a certain order - otherwise representatives of the corresponding species will not recognize the song as their own 16 .

Like a language, a song is learned during a sensitive period, meaning there is a strong cultural component in its transmission. In the sensitive period there is a stage of “babbling” (or “sub-song”, English. subsong) - a grown-up fledgling chick makes a variety of sounds, as if trying out various possibilities of the vocal apparatus 17 . Unlike adult males, it makes noises quietly, as they say, “under one’s breath.” For normal development of the vocal repertoire, he needs to hear both himself and adult representatives of his species. Learning occurs through onomatopoeia, and this imitation is self-sustaining - like children acquiring language, chicks do not need special encouragement for the learned elements of the communicative system. As a result of such training, dialects (local versions of a song) and idiolects (individual versions of a song, which are also called “dialects” in the works of ornithologists) are formed, which creates some confusion. Birds have a lateralization of the brain, with sound production normally controlled by the left hemisphere.

Rice. 4.2. Sonogram of chaffinch song (Fringilla coelebs).

In songbirds, as well as in parrots and hummingbirds, which also learn their vocal communication signals through vocal imitation, sound production is controlled by different brain structures than in species in which vocalization is innate. 18 . Damage to similar areas of the brain leads to similar disturbances in sound production: in some birds, like people with Broca's aphasia, they lose the ability to correctly compose sequences of sounds, in others - the ability to learn new sounds, in others - they retain only the ability to echolalic repetition 19 .

There are many similar features in the language and communication of cetaceans. In both cases, the carrier of information is sound (although in cetaceans, unlike humans, most of the signals are transmitted in the ultrasonic range). Dolphins have “proper names” - the famous “whistle signature”: with this signal (individual for each individual) dolphins complete their messages, and with its help you can call them. In killer whales Orcinus orca local dialects have been discovered 20 . As in human languages, some “words” (sound signals) in killer whales are more stable, others change relatively quickly (in killer whales - over the course of about 10 years) 21 .

Sound signals of bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus), according to the observations of V.I. Markova 22 , are combined into complexes of several levels of complexity. A complex consisting of several sounds grouped in a certain way can be an integral part of a complex of a higher level, just as a word consisting of several phonemes is an integral part of a more complex complex - a sentence. Just as a phoneme can be described as a set of semantically distinctive features, individual components can be identified in the sound signals of dolphins, contrasting one sound with another.

Most likely, such a complex structure of signals suggests that dolphins (like people) have the ability (and therefore, probably, the need) to encode a large (according to Markov’s calculations, potentially even infinitely large) amount of diverse information.

Apparently, the communication system of dolphins allows them to convey very specific information. In an experiment conducted by William Evans and Jarvis Bastian 23 , two dolphins (male Buzz and female Doris) were trained to press pedals in a specific order to receive food reinforcement. The order varied depending on whether the light above the pool was lit or blinking, and reinforcement was given only when the pedals were in in the right order both dolphins pressed. When the light was installed so that only Doris could see it, she was able to “explain” to Buzz through the opaque wall of the pool in which order to press the pedals - 90% of the time correctly.

Rice. 4.3. Scheme of the experiment of W. Evans and J. Bastian 2

In the experiments of V.I. Markov and his colleagues, the dolphins transmitted information to each other about the size of the ball (whether it was large or small) and which side the experimenter was presenting it from (right or left) 25 .

As David and Melba Caldwell have shown, dolphins, like humans, are able to recognize their relatives by their voices - regardless of what exactly they say (or, in the case of dolphins, whistle). 26 . In both cetaceans and songbirds, as in humans, vocalization is voluntary. It is independent of the limbic system (subcortical structures), does not indicate emotional arousal and is carried out by skeletal muscles 27 . The organs of sound production are completely different: in humans it is primarily the larynx with vocal cords, in dolphins and whales - nasal sacs, in birds - the syrinx (otherwise the “lower larynx”, located not at the beginning of the trachea, like the larynx of mammals, but in the place where the bronchi branch off from the trachea; the evolutionary origins of the syrinx and larynx in mammals are different).

Rice. 4.4. The brains of dolphins, humans, orangutans and dogs.

Cetaceans, like songbirds, have lateralization of the brain. But if in cetaceans, like in humans, the cerebral cortex (neocortex) is asymmetrically structured, then in birds this property is realized on the basis of structures, although homologous to the neocortex, but still not identical to it - the nidopallium and hyperpallium (previously they were called neostriatum and hyperstriatum, respectively) 28 .

However, asymmetry of brain structures is found in a wide variety of animals, including eels, newts, frogs and sharks 29 .

For both cetaceans and songbirds, the ability to imitate is extremely important. Thus, dolphins borrow a “whistle signature” from other dolphins of the same group. However, the ability to onomatopoeia has been discovered in a number of species that use sound communication - it is found not only in songbirds and cetaceans, but also in bats and seals 30 , elephants 31 , and perhaps even in mice. The ability to learn the vocal elements of communication seems to be characteristic primarily of those species in which sound is used to maintain social structure.

All these (and others that will surely be discovered) similar features of the communication systems of songbirds, cetaceans and humans, as can be seen, were acquired independently. Because these similarities span a range of properties, their evolutionary emergence is likely to be a positive feedback process, and the answer to the question of what is cause and what is effect is far from clear. In particular, according to T. Deacon, the asymmetry inherent in the human brain is more a consequence than a cause of the emergence of language 32 .

The study of animal communication makes it possible to resolve the most incomprehensible “mystery of language” for some researchers - why it is even possible. Indeed, an individual performing communicative actions spends its time and energy, becoming more noticeable to predators - for what? Why pass on information to others instead of using it yourself? 33 ? Why not deceive your relatives to get your own benefit? 34 ? Why use information from others rather than your own feelings? 35 ? Or maybe it is more profitable to collect information based on the signals of other individuals, and “keep silent” yourself (thus not paying a high price for producing a signal)? Such reasoning leads, for example, to the idea that language evolved to manipulate relatives (see more below, Chapter 5). Or maybe the emergence of language is not connected with information exchange at all? Perhaps language emerged solely as a tool for thinking, as Noam Chomsky believes, or even as a game, as anthropologist Chris Knight suggests. 36 ?

In fact, if we analyze the action of natural selection at the individual, and not at the group level, then the advantages of a communication system (any - not just language) cannot be detected. And this leads some researchers to the conclusion that natural selection played no role in the process of glottogenesis 37 , and the emergence of language may, in principle, not be associated with the acquisition of any adaptive advantages, but simply be side effect development of some other properties, for example, upright walking (see Chapter 3) 38 .

But in fact, all the questions listed above can be attributed not only to human language - they are relevant to any communication system. And only a person who is not experienced in ethology can ask them. Indeed, any communication is costly: the animal expends energy on the production of the signal, spends time (which could be used for something that brings direct biological benefit, for example, for nutrition or hygiene procedures), during the production and perception of the signal less carefully watches everything else, risking being eaten (a classic example is the current capercaillie, see photo 19 on the inset). In addition, energy is expended to maintain the brain structures necessary to perceive signals and the anatomical structures necessary to produce them. However, the “altruistic” behavior of communicating individuals, who go to certain costs in order (willingly or unwittingly) to convey information to their relatives, ultimately leads to a general increase in the number of “altruists” - even if within their population they lose the competition to more “selfish” ones. relatives - since populations in which there are many altruists increase their numbers much more effectively than populations with a predominance of “egoists”. This statistical paradox, known as Simpson's paradox, was recently modeled in bacteria. 39 , among which there are also individuals distinguished by “altruistic” behavior, i.e., producing - with an increase in their own costs - substances that promote the growth of all surrounding bacteria. The stronger the competition between groups, the higher the level of altruism and cooperation within. separate groups 40 .

A communicative system - any - arises, develops and exists not for the benefit of the individual giving the signal, and not for the benefit of the individual receiving it; its purpose is not even to organize relations in couple“speaker” - “listener”. A communication system is “a specialized control mechanism in a population system as a whole” 41 .

Individuals of the same species inevitably turn out to be competitors of each other, since they lay claim to the same resources (food, shelter, sexual partners, etc.). However, when choosing a habitat, animals prefer to settle next to representatives of their own species. The neighborhood may be close (as, for example, in group mammals or colonial birds) or not very close (for example, the individual territories of tigers or bears extend for many kilometers), but even bears do not tend to settle where there are no other bears nearby. And it’s clear why: if an individual appeared whose genes contained the desire to settle as far as possible from relatives (and thereby get rid of competitors), it would be extremely difficult for it to find a mate and pass on these genes to its offspring. As recent studies have shown 42 , birds choose nesting sites close to those of relatives, but tend to settle further away from representatives of species occupying a similar ecological niche. This means that competition for resources between representatives of the same species and different species is structured differently: if it is better to avoid or drive out strangers, then you can “agree” with your own - with the help of communicative interactions, distribute resources so that these resources (albeit of different quality) in the end there was enough for everyone.

The communication system allows each individual to find its place. For example, an individual that has received a high rank based on the results of communicative interactions can feed on something that gives a lot of energy, but requires a lot of time. s x the cost of preparing to forage in the most specialized and efficient way possible, she “knows” that she will not be disturbed too often. A low-ranking individual will choose a food-procuring strategy that does not promise much energy gain, but which allows for frequent distractions. And this gives a significant gain, since an attempt to obtain highly nutritious, but time-consuming food would turn into a real tragedy for a low-ranking individual: among its neighbors there are too many hunters to “assert themselves at its expense” (i.e., increase their rank through a communicative victory over it ), and she simply would not have had time to implement such a feeding strategy. Thus, communication significantly reduces competition for resources and allows more representatives of the same species to survive. In a similar way, communication distributes individuals in other aspects important for the life of the species, for example, during sexual reproduction. Thus, a high-ranking deer wins a whole harem of females and gets the opportunity to pass on its genes to a large number of descendants. And low-ranking deer, who do not have their own harem, gain access to the opposite sex in a different way: slowly, while the owner of the harem does not see, they mate with his females and thereby also ensure themselves a certain reproductive success 43 .

In addition, species that practice sexual reproduction have the task of “morally preparing” partners for mating. Solving problems of this kind without the mediation of a communication system is truly “like death” - this is clearly demonstrated by the Australian marsupial mice (genus Antechinus). Their males attack the females without saying a word (that is, without first exchanging any communication signals) - and as a result, none of them survive the breeding season. As shown by data from Ian MacDonald and his colleagues 44 , everyone dies from stress, although in principle the body of a male marsupial mouse is designed for a longer life: if you keep him at home in a cage, not allowing him near females (and other males with whom he would also enter into physical rather than communicative interactions) , he will live about two years, like the female.

Rice. 4.5. The marsupial mouse is living proof that it is possible to live without communication, but not well and not for long.

With high fecundity and the absence of effective predators, such a species may still exist, but under less favorable conditions it would probably not be able to withstand competition with species that use communication.

The presence in the repertoire of a type of special communicative actions makes it possible to reduce the number of direct physical influences on relatives: if individuals can, after exchanging several signals, find out which of them is higher than the other in the hierarchy, has more rights to the female, etc., there is no need to bite or peck or otherwise injure each other. Accordingly, the more perfect the communication system of a species, the less dangerous the interaction processes are for the health of partners.

A developed communication system makes it possible to effectively organize the joint activities of several individuals - even if signals are not used during this activity. So, for example, wolves, who have not previously had the opportunity to “agree” among themselves on a mutual hierarchy, cannot hunt deer in a coordinated manner (and, accordingly, are forced to be content with voles and other rodents). Directly at the moment of hunting, wolves do not exchange signals, but “understanding” their place in the hierarchy sets a certain internal rhythm of movements of each animal. The combination of various “internal rhythms” that complement each other allows us to successfully combine efforts 45 .

Another task of the communication system is to sort individuals into territories. Those who communicate more successfully than others have the greatest chance of occupying the most convenient habitats (that is, those to which individuals of a given species are best adapted). Less successful communicators are pushed to the periphery. In this way, the communication system organizes the structure of the population, and this allows - not specific individuals, but the population as a whole - to form an adaptive response to changes ecological situation.

In general, we can say that the ability to communicate allows a species (primarily the species, and not its individual representatives) to shift its activity from a direct reaction to events that have already occurred to the area of extrapolation and forecast 46 : as a result of actions that are performed not “in a hurry” (after something has happened), but in relatively comfortable conditions of readiness for communication, the future turns out to be, to some extent, accessible to forecasting. The exchange of signals allows an individual to make some forecast for the future - and act based on it. Accordingly, an advantage goes to those individuals who know how to organize their activity under the condition knowledge what awaits them next. This provides the species with greater stability. The more perfect the communication system, the more the future as a result of its use becomes predictable (and subsequently formed). In addition, “the communication system stimulates the development of a variety of compensatory mechanisms in everyone who says “wrong”” 47 , since “communication continues even with violations of the rules for the transmission of signs, if partners are ready to change attitudes towards the norm” 48 .

Rice. 4.6.The takyr roundhead (left) is better armed than its close relative, the reticulated roundhead (right). Therefore, for the takyr roundhead it turns out to be useful to use communicative signals instead of direct physical influences. For the reticulated roundhead, on the contrary, it is more profitable to “save” on communication: since its bites are not so terrible, it is unprofitable to spend a lot of resources on getting rid of them.

How communication signals arise can be observed in the example of two closely related species of lizards - takyr and reticulated round-headed lizards ( Phrynocephalus helioscopus, Ph. reticulatus) 49 . Roundheads require that a male not mate with a female that has already been impregnated by another male (and waste his reproductive resources). Accordingly, the female must avoid mating. In such cases, the reticulated roundhead either runs away or bites the male. But such a trick will not work for takyr roundheads: firstly, takyr roundheads are more purposeful, which means that the “escape” tactic will require greater costs. And secondly, they are better armed, so bites will cause more serious damage to the health of the male. And then a communication signal arises. It is easy to notice that these are, in essence, the same movements as those of the reticulated roundhead: movements reflecting the conflict of two impulses - to run away and to bite. But if in the reticulated roundhead these movements are determined purely emotionally and can be completely unnoticeable, then the takyr roundhead makes them clearly for show: they are more stereotypical, even somewhat unnatural, with sharp, clearly distinguishable boundaries, the whole demonstration lasts longer than in the reticulated roundhead. And this is not surprising: for takyr roundheads it is very important that the male abandons his intentions without harming the health of both his and the female.

Note that we are probably not talking about any real “signaling” here. The female does not want to communicate anything to the male, she simply experiences very strong fluctuations between the intention to bite and the intention to run away - so strong that the male manages to notice this conflict of motivations, and he starts - again, without any, probably, participation of consciousness - behavior “ stop the persecution." And selection favors those populations where females are more likely to be born who are able to most carefully demonstrate their intentions to the male, and males who recognize the female’s demonstration with maximum efficiency. Accordingly, males develop detectors to detect the characteristic features of the female “pantomime,” and females make their movements increasingly clear and stereotypical, so that their clearly defined boundaries are recognized as well as possible by the male’s detectors. In addition, the female's demonstration continues for a noticeable amount of time - so that the male has time to recognize the signal and launch the appropriate behavior program.

However, in fairness, it should be noted that takyr roundheads (as well as us humans) experience “communicative failures,” so that some males end up becoming victims of bites. But the proportion of such males is significantly (statistically significant) less than that of the reticulated roundhead.

This example clearly shows that for the emergence of communicative signals, a genius is not needed, creating signs in a fit of inspiration, inventing ever new combinations of forms and meanings. You probably don't even need consciousness. It is only necessary that the nervous system can monitor events occurring in the external world and launch behavioral programs that optimally respond to them. If it turns out to be important for the life of a species that its relatives can learn about certain intentions of an individual before these intentions are translated into actions, selection will take care to make the corresponding intentions as noticeable as possible - on the one hand, to emphasize certain components of the physical manifestations of the corresponding intentions, and on the other hand, configure detectors to recognize them. The standard way of development of communication systems is that individuals observe the appearance and/or behavior of their relatives and they develop detectors to register this. At the same time, elements of the appearance and/or behavior of relatives are becoming more and more easily recorded using detectors. A positive feedback loop arises between the sender and receiver of the communication signal, causing the communication system to become more and more - from an evolutionary perspective - more complex (of course, only until the costs of communication begin to exceed the benefits from it). Creating detectors that record certain characteristics of relatives is evolutionarily simpler than creating detectors suitable for observing other species, landscapes, etc. (although organisms, of course, also have such detectors), since the greater visibility of external elements species and/or behavior, and the degree of perception of them are encoded in the same genome and are subject to virtually the same natural selection.

In principle, any behavior of an animal can be noticed by its relatives and, in connection with this, change their own behavior. For example, when a pigeon pecks at a piece of bread, another pigeon (or, say, a sparrow) may, seeing this, come closer and start pecking at the same piece from the other end (unless, of course, it is driven away). Therefore, in the animal world there are often actions that have both an informational and non-informational component. For example, such are the actions of a dog marking its territory with its own urine: in order to empty its bladder, it would be enough for it to urinate once (and not raise its paw at each tree or pillar, dropping a few drops each time), but the smell left behind carries information for other dogs.

Perhaps we should talk about “signals” only when a particular action ceases to bring direct biological benefit, becoming only a means of transmitting information. In this case, it is optimized not for the changing characteristics of the surrounding world, but for strictly tuned detectors.

Perhaps the rough operation of the detectors is the key to why movements that have moved from the realm of ordinary everyday activity into the sphere of communication often become sharp and “pretentious,” and their individual elements are sustained longer than similar elements of ordinary behavior. For example, birds of paradise can hang upside down for hours while demonstrating.

Such discrete, long-lasting signals have been recorded in birds and reptiles, but in mammals, in many cases the structure of the communication system is different. Perhaps the fact is that the cerebral cortex (neocortex) makes it possible to more effectively recognize, perhaps in something else, but in mammals communicative signals often turn out to be continuous, with an infinite number of transitional steps from one signal to another . Figure 4.7 shows the facial expressions of a domestic cat, corresponding to different degrees of fear and aggressiveness. The diagram shows only three gradations for each of the emotions, but, of course, a cat is not an automaton that sharply “snaps” from position 1 to position 2 and then to position 3. The reader can mentally complete the infinite number of shades of both of these feelings, which will take an intermediate position between any two adjacent cells of this diagram.

However, mammals have not only emotional signals that smoothly transform into one another. A comparative study of different species belonging to the same classification group (i.e., one taxon) makes it possible to see trends in the development of communication systems.

Rice. 4.7. Facial expressions of a domestic cat 50 .

Let us consider as an example two different types of ground squirrels (see photo 20 on the inset) - the more primitive (in structure) Californian ground squirrel ( Spermophilus beecheyi) and the more “progressive” Belding's ground squirrel ( Spermophilus beldingi). Both species have danger signals - chirping and whistling. In Belding's ground squirrel, a whistle is a signal of very strong danger, and a chirp (or, more precisely, its analogue, a trill) is a moderate one. Let us note again that the word “signal” here does not mean any intentional action specifically intended for communication. It’s just that the gopher, which is more frightened, produces a sound more like a whistle - especially the stronger the fear. Accordingly, between a trill and a whistle, an infinite number of intermediate “signals” are possible. Relatives who hear this sound are “infected” by the corresponding emotion (just as people are “infected” by yawning or laughter), and many of them involuntarily produce corresponding vocalizations. The reasoning of E.N. is quite applicable to this level of communication development. Panova 51 , according to which animals do not have any “languages”.

But the California ground squirrel's communication system is fundamentally different. Whistling and chirping become referential signals. referential signals), i.e., signals denoting a very specific object of the external world (called a “referent” in semiotics): a whistle means “danger from the air”, a chirp means “danger from the ground” 52 .

The “etymology” of these signals is no less transparent than the “etymology” of the takyr roundhead demonstrations: a flying predator is usually more dangerous (and, accordingly, scary) than a ground predator. But the functioning of the California ground squirrel's whistle and chirp is radically different. There are no intermediate gradations between them - just as there are no intermediate gradations between an eagle flying through the air and a coyote running along the ground. These signals are no longer so associated with emotions: a gopher may be very frightened by the sudden appearance of a land predator, but still the sound it makes will (most likely) be a chirp, not a whistle. Conversely, a bird of prey may be very far in the sky and not cause much fear - but a ground squirrel will (in the vast majority of cases) whistle when it sees it. Signals of this type (although they may also not be intentional) do not “infect” conspecifics with emotions, but provide them with specific information about the world around them.

Accordingly, referential signals can rightfully be called symbol signals (as was done in the work of ethologist Vladimir Semenovich Fridman 53 ), since they do not have an obligatory natural connection between form and meaning. Interestingly, these types of ground squirrels also differ in their perception of the signal: Belding's ground squirrels relay the signal only if they themselves are sufficiently frightened, while California ground squirrels are able to transmit information further regardless of their emotional state. The intensity of the influence of a signal in this system is proportional not to the degree of excitation of the individual emitting the signal, but to the degree of stereotypicality of its external form (since the signals of the most “correct” type are most effectively recognized by detectors).

This example shows that specialization for a certain type of existence in social animals may imply not only certain anatomical changes, but also the optimization of “noticeable” actions (communicative signals), their liberation from emotions and their acquisition of the ability to designate specific objects (or situations) the surrounding world. It is at this level of development of the communicative system that not only the arbitrariness of the sign arises, but also the opportunity to break away from the “here and now”: it is enough for a ground squirrel to hear a whistle in order to be able to launch a behavioral complex that ensures salvation from a bird of prey - it does not need to observe the predator itself. The separation from the “here and now” allows the individual to make a less emotional, more “balanced” decision about what to do next.

Referential signals, like elements of human language, are characterized by categorical perception. This was tested, in particular, in the experiments of Alexey Anatolyevich Shibkov on the most primitive representatives of the order of primates - tupayas ( Tupaia glis, see photo 21 on the inset). By combining the presentation of one of the signals inherent in this type with a weak blow electric shock, the animals developed a quite noticeable reaction to this signal - an avoidance reaction. Then the characteristics of the signal gradually changed, gradually turning it into another signal of the same type. In full accordance with the model of categorical perception, as long as the signal remained “the same” (according to the experimental Tupaya), the animals showed an avoidance reaction, but as soon as the signal became “different”, this reaction immediately disappeared 54 .

Referential signaling systems have been found in many animal species - meerkats (African mongooses) Suricata suricatta(different types of danger - terrestrial predator, bird of prey, snake) 55 , y ring-tailed lemurs Lemur catta(differentiate between “danger from the ground” and “danger from the air”) 56 , in prairie dogs (terrestrial rodents from the squirrel family) Cynomys gunnisoni 57 and even in domestic chickens (designation of two types of danger - ground and air predators - and a “food” cry) 58 . Probably, the development of such signals from emotional ones is an evolutionary trend - it can be traced, in particular, in marmots 59 .

The danger warning system of vervet monkeys consists of referential signals ( Cercopithecus aethiops, see photo 22 on the inset). As primatologists Dorothy Cini and Robert Seephard found 60 , vervet monkeys have clearly distinct danger signals: one cry indicates an eagle, another a leopard (or cheetah), a third a snake (mamba or python), a fourth a dangerous primate (baboon or human). The researchers played tape recordings of different types of calls for them (in the absence of corresponding dangers), and the vervet monkeys responded “correctly” every time: at the signal “leopard” they rushed to thin upper branches, at the signal “eagle” they descended to the ground, at the signal “snake” they stood up on their hind legs and looked around. To find out whether vervet monkeys' signals were emotional or referential, the researchers made recordings that were longer or shorter, louder or quieter - for emotional signals these characteristics are of primary importance, but for referential ones they are completely insignificant (just as for the meaning of a word, in general, it is not what matters is whether it is said quickly or slowly, loudly or quietly). Experiments have shown that for vervet monkeys it is not the intensity of the signal that is important, but its formant characteristics.

Rice. 4.8. This family tree of marmots (genus Marmotta) is based on molecular data, but it shows that as we move from more primitive to more advanced species, the number of different signals increases 61 .

The communicative system of vervet monkeys is often considered as an intermediate stage on the way to human language: at first there were only a few signals, like in vervet monkeys, then, gradually adding one signal at a time, human ancestors eventually reached the language of the modern type 62 . However, this is apparently not true. The point is that, firstly, external shape(sound shell) of signals in vervet monkeys is innate, therefore, the expansion of such a communication system and the addition of new signals to it can only occur through genetic mutations. The human system of signs is not innate, it contains a huge number of elements (tens of thousands - there would simply not be enough evolutionary time for such a number of necessary mutations) and, moreover, it is fundamentally open; the addition of new signs to it easily occurs during the life of one individual. It is possible that by reading this chapter you have added several new words to your vocabulary - a vervet dog cannot achieve this. All that she can do during her life is to somewhat clarify the form (acoustic characteristics) and meaning of a particular cry (for example, learn that the “eagle” signal does not apply to scavenger birds).

Secondly, in human language the reaction to a signal is fundamentally different. If in vervet monkeys the perception of a signal strictly sets behavior, then in humans the perception of a signal sets only the beginning of the activity of interpreting it (according to T. Deacon, this is caused by the presence of a huge number of associative connections between words-symbols in the brain 64 ), the results of this interpretation may depend on personal experience, on individual character traits, on the attitude towards the one who gave the signal, on momentary intentions and preferences, etc., etc. Therefore, it often turns out that the reaction to the same text varies greatly among different listeners (or readers).

This difference between humans and vervet monkeys is understandable. In vervet monkeys, the function of this fragment of the communication system is to ensure the rapid initiation of the correct behavioral program to escape from the appropriate predator, so that any deviations from the standard response are suppressed by selection. A person, who has largely escaped the control of natural selection, can afford to think for a long time about the meaning of the message he heard. Thus, although vervet monkeys, like us, belong to the order of primates, there is no homology between their communication system and language, but only an analogy.

Other representatives of the cercopithecus, the great white-nosed monkey ( Cercopithecus nicticans, see photo 23 on the inset), one can observe another analogy with human language 65 . These monkeys, like vervet monkeys, have different signals for different types of danger - the cry “pew” (in English works - pyow) means “leopard”, the cry “hak” ( hack) - "eagle". But they, as Keith Arnold and Klaus Zuberbühler established, also have the ability to combine signals, and in this case, as in human language, a non-trivial increment of meaning is obtained (not reducible to a simple sum of meanings components). When a male utters the “pew-hack” sequence (or, more often, repeats each of these calls several times - but in exactly this sequence), this does not cause a reaction of escape from a leopard or eagle, but the movement of the entire group over a sufficiently significant distance - more significant than without the “pew-hack” signal. Some researchers tend to see this as similar to human syntax (two “words” make up a “sentence”), others believe it is more reminiscent of morphology (a compound word like armchair-rocking chair), but this is nothing more than a dispute about analogy. As a homology with language, we can only consider the cognitive ability to obtain a non-trivial increase in meaning when combining signals (cf. evening - evening party“student of the evening department of the institute”, but morning - matinee“a festival or performance given in the morning”: the same suffix in combination with the names of different parts of the day adds completely different meanings).

An even more detailed analogy with human language can be seen in the communication system of Campbell's monkeys ( , see photo 24 on the inset), living in the Taï National Park (Ivory Coast). The males of these monkeys use six types of signals, which researchers (K. Zuberbühler and his co-authors) write down as “boom”, “crack”, “crack-oo”, “hok”, “hok-u” and “wack-u” 66 . The “-y” element, highlighted in three of these signals, is interpreted by the authors as a suffix. It is, like, for example, the Russian suffix - stv(O) (cf. Brotherhood) or English - hood(cf. brotherhood"brotherhood" from brother“brother”), is not used separately, but in a certain way changes the meaning of the stem to which it is attached. Thus, the “krak” signal means a leopard, and the “krak-u” signal means danger in general.

Combining signs gives, as with great white-nosed monkeys, non-trivial increments of meaning. For example, a series of “krack-oo” calls may be made when a monkey hears the voice of a leopard or the call of a Dian monkey warning of a leopard, but if this signal is preceded by a twice-repeated “boom” call, then the entire “phrase” is interpreted as “a tree falls.” or a large branch.” If a series of “krack-oo” calls preceded by a pair of “boom” calls is occasionally interspersed with a “hok-oo” call, the result is a territorial signal that males emit when meeting another group of Campbell's monkeys at the border of a property. Simply repeating the “boom” cry twice means that the male has lost sight of his group (females, hearing such a signal, approach the male). In total, the authors identified nine possible “phrases” combined from these six cries.

Rice. 4.9. Sound signals of Campbell's monkeys (sonograms). The black arrow shows formant movement; the “suffix” “-у” is surrounded by a dotted frame 67 .

In the communicative system of Campbell's monkeys, rules of “word order” are also presented: for example, the “boom” signal is used only at the beginning of a chain of calls and is always repeated twice, the “hawk” signal precedes the “hawk-oo” signal if they occur together, a series of calls, warning about an eagle, usually begins with several cries of “hok”, and ends with several cries of “krak-u”, etc.

According to the authors of the study, in some aspects this communication system approaches human language even more than the successes of apes, trained in intermediary languages and able to form combinations like “WATER” + “BIRD”, although it still does not have real grammar 68 . And the point here is not only that the rules are quite simple, and their number is small. The main difference, in my opinion, between this system and human language is the lack of buildability in it: there are six cries and nine possible “sentences”, and this is all limited; new signs and new messages are not built.

The limitations of the studied material do not make it possible to judge whether all these signals (including those containing the suffix “-y”) and their combinations are innate, inherent in all representatives Cercopithecus campbelli campbelli, or at least some part of this system is cultural tradition of this particular population. According to the authors' observations, the first is more likely to be true: signals are issued without volitional control, males do not demonstrate the intention to inform their relatives, they simply experience emotions - and against this background they produce corresponding cries. At the same time, these data show that even in the absence of volitional control over sound production, the life of a species leading a group lifestyle in the forest, in conditions of low visibility and a large number of predators, is conducive to the formation of a communication system that uses combinations of sound signals (both with each other, and with elements that are not individual signals) in order to produce more different messages from the small number of available innate calls.

If we consider the communication systems of various vertebrate species, we can see another general trend - a decrease in the degree of innateness. In lower animals that have a communicative system, both the external form of the signal and its “meaning” (that which will one way or another determine the behavior of the animal that has perceived this signal) are innate; the reaction to a signal is just as innate and stereotypical as the reaction to non-signal stimuli (that is why such signals are called releasers). For example, a herring gull chick, begging for food, pecks at a red spot on the beak of its parent, and this prompts the parent to feed the chick - in this example, both the actions of the chick and the reaction of the adult bird are innate, instinctive. Signals of this kind, of course, can be improved to some extent during the development of an individual (for example, a seagull chick, over time, “trains” to more accurately hit the red spot), but no more than any other instinctive actions.

In animals with more high level cognitive development, so-called “hierarchical” signals appear. This term, introduced by ethologist V.S. Friedman, emphasizes that the main function of these signals is to maintain hierarchical relationships between individuals within the group. The form of hierarchical signals is still innate, but the “meaning” is established in each group separately. For example, the presentation of the outer tail feathers by a great spotted woodpecker to its congener means “this is me,” while the meaning of “this individual is higher than me in the hierarchy” (or “this individual is lower than me in the hierarchy”) is completed by the congener who saw this signal, based on the experience of previous interactions with this bird. Such a meaning cannot be innate, since it is impossible to predict in advance the place of a particular individual in a particular group. In addition, this meaning can change based on the interaction of individuals with each other.

The next stage of development is the so-called “ad-hoc signals”, available only in narrow-nosed monkeys (starting with baboons): these elements of communicative behavior are created along the way, for momentary needs, respectively, neither their form nor their “ meaning". Only a species with a sufficiently well-developed brain can afford such a communication system, since in order to maintain communication of this kind, individuals must be ready to attach signaling significance to actions that were not previously signals.

Human language represents the next member of this series: former ad-hoc signals begin to be consolidated, accumulated and transmitted by inheritance through learning and imitation - just like, for example, the ability to make tools. The result is an “instrumental” (A.N. Barulin’s term) semiotic system.

One of the most significant differences between the communication systems of animals and human language is often cited as the fact that they are not associated with individual experience, with rational activity, whereas in humans, language and thinking were united during evolution “into one speech-thinking system.” 69 . Indeed, signals with an innate form and innate meaning cannot convey the life experience of an individual - only the generalized experience of the species. But hierarchical signals partly reflect individual experience, although only in one, very limited area - the experience of competitive interactions of one individual with others. Ad-hoc signals are even more related to personal experience, since both form and meaning can include what a particular individual has learned during her life (see below).

As for monkeys, their sound signals, although innate in form, are also likely to be involved in the transmission of personal experience. One such case was witnessed by S. Savage-Rumbaugh after an evening walk in the forest with the bonobo Panbanisha. While walking, they noticed the silhouette of a large cat on a tree and, frightened, returned to the laboratory, where they were met by the bonobos Kanzi, Tamuli, Matata and the chimpanzee Panzi. The monkeys (probably based on non-verbal signals) guessed that Panbanisha and S. Savage-Rumbaugh were frightened by something in the forest - they, Savage-Rumbaugh writes, “began to peer intensely into the darkness and make soft “hoo-hoo” sounds, indicating something unusual.<Панбаниша>She also started making some sounds, as if she was telling them about the big cat we saw in the forest. Everyone else listened and responded with loud shouts. Is she telling them something that I can't understand? I don't know" 70 . It is difficult to say exactly what information Panbanisha conveyed (she did not use Yerkish), but “Kanzi and Panzi, when they were once again allowed to take a walk, discovered hesitation and fear in this particular section of the forest. Since they had never been scared before, it seems that they were able to understand something from what happened.” 71 .

A similar “story” was observed by Russian primatologist Svetlana Leonidovna Novoselova. The chimpanzee Lada, who once had to be taken out for a walk, despite her desperate howling and resistance, the next day “told” people about what had happened: “The monkey, dramatically raising his arms, stood up in his nest on a wide shelf, went down and, running around the cage , reproduced very faithfully intonationally in her cry, which lasted at least 30 minutes, the emotional dynamics of the experiences of the previous day. I and everyone around me had the complete impression of a “story about what I experienced.” 72 .

This behavior has also been observed in natural conditions. Jane Goodall, who has long observed the behavior of chimpanzees in the wild, describes a case when a female cannibal, Passion, appeared in a group of chimpanzees she was observing, eating other people's cubs. The female Miff managed to save her cub from Passion, and subsequently, when she met with Passion not one on one, but in the company of friendly males, Miff showed great excitement and was able to convey to the males the idea that she really did not like Passion and should be punished - at least the males, seeing Miff's behavior, gave Passion an aggressive display 73 .

It can be assumed that in all such cases the monkeys convey not so much the specific experience itself as their emotions about it. And this is probably enough in most cases, since anthropoids are able to very subtly discern the nuances of what psychologists call “non-verbal communication.” For example, the chimpanzee Washoe was able to guess that Roger and Deborah Fouts, who worked with her, were husband and wife, although they deliberately tried to behave with each other at work not like spouses, but like colleagues. “No one compares to chimpanzees at understanding non-verbal cues!” - R. Fouts wrote about this 74 .

However, if the information to be conveyed is quite unusual, this method of communication fails. So, in the example described above, Miff could not explain what exactly happened - otherwise the males would probably not have limited themselves to a demonstration, but would have kicked Passion out of the group or, at least, would have warned about the danger of females friendly to them.

However, when in language projects monkeys have at their disposal a more advanced communicative means - an intermediary language (and, by the way, a more understanding interlocutor - a human), they are able to put their own experience and views on the world into a symbolic form (see. examples in chapter 1).

Rice. 4.10. Wagging dance.

Attempts to decipher the communication systems of animals have been made repeatedly. One of the most successful is the deciphering of the waggle dance of the honey bee by the Austrian biologist Karl von Frisch 75 . The angle between the dance axis and the vertical (if the bee dances on a vertical wall) corresponds to the angle between the direction towards food and the direction towards the Sun; the duration of the bee's movement in a straight line carries information about the distance to the food source; In addition, the speed with which the bee moves, the wagging of the belly, the movement from side to side, the sound component of the dance, etc. are important - at least eleven parameters in total. A brilliant confirmation of the correctness of this decoding was created by Axel Michelsen 76 robot bee: its dances in the hive (see photo 17 on the inset), controlled by a computer program, successfully mobilized foraging bees to search for food. The bees correctly determined the direction to the feeder and the distance to it - even though the robot bee did not provide the foragers with scent information.

But many other communication systems turned out to be more complex. Thus, it was not possible to find out exactly what movements of ants touching their relatives with their antennas inform them, say, about turning to the right. In dolphins, only the “whistle signature” was identified. The only deciphered signal from wolves is the “sound of loneliness.” Goodall 77 notes that chimpanzees make the sound “huu” “only at the sight of a small snake, an unknown moving creature or a dead animal,” but nothing so definite can be said about almost any other chimpanzee sounds.

The experiments of Emil Menzel are widely known 78 with chimpanzees. The experimenter showed one of the chimpanzees a cache of hidden fruit, and then, when the monkey returned to its group, it somehow “informed” its fellow tribesmen about the location of the cache - at least they went in search, obviously having an idea of \u200b\u200bwhich direction to go walk, and sometimes even overtook the person reporting. If one chimpanzee was shown a cache of fruit and another a cache of vegetables, the group did not hesitate to choose the first cache. If a toy snake was hidden in a cache, the chimpanzees approached it with some caution. But exactly how chimpanzees conveyed the relevant information remains a mystery. High-ranking individuals seemed to do nothing at all for this, but nevertheless sought understanding; low-ranking individuals, on the contrary, acted out a whole pantomime, made expressive gestures in the appropriate direction - but still they were unable to mobilize the group to search for the hiding place.

To decipher the meaning of a particular signal, it is necessary that its appearance corresponds one-to-one either to a certain situation in the external world, or to a strictly defined reaction of individuals perceiving the signal. That’s why it turned out to be so easy to decipher the danger warning system of vervet monkeys: a cry with certain acoustic characteristics (different from the characteristics of other calls) strictly correlates (a) with the presence of a leopard in the visual zone and (b) with the escape of all monkeys hearing the signal to thin upper branches.

But most signals from wolves, dolphins, and chimpanzees do not show such strong correlations. As noted by E.N. Panov, they can “act in different capacities at different times” 79 . For example, in chimpanzees, the same signal is associated with a situation of friendliness, and with a situation of submission, and even with a situation of aggression. According to Panov, this indicates that from the point of view of information theory, “these signals are significantly degenerate” 80 and they don’t have any clear meaning. But the same reasoning applies to many expressions of human language. If we consider words not in a dictionary, where each of them is assigned a very specific semantics, but as part of expressions pronounced in real life situations, it is easy to see that they, like animal signals, can act in different qualities at different times. For example, the sentence “Well done!” can act both as praise (“Have you already done all your homework? Well done!”) and as reprimand (“Did you break a cup? Well done!”). The word “point” can mean the beginning (“reference point”) and the end (“let’s put an end to this”), a small black circle depicted on paper (“draw a straight line through point A and point B”), and a real, sometimes quite large and not always a round place (“sales outlet”). Thus, if you follow the logic of E.N. Panov, human language may also have to be recognized as degenerate from the point of view of information theory.

Rice. 4.11. These six chimpanzee signals (identified by ethologist Jaan van Hooff) can, although with different frequencies, appear in different situations - from friendly interaction (shaded bars), to display submission (white bars), to aggression (black bars). The relative height of the bars reflects the frequency with which each signal was recorded in the corresponding situation. The signal “squeal with bared teeth” (e) is used in all three types of interactions 81 .

In human languages there is, apparently, not a single expression that would evoke the same reaction every time. Even after hearing the cry of “Fire!”, some people will rush to participate in the rescue, others will begin to loot, others will contemplate what is happening without taking any action, and others will simply pass by. As Tyutchev wrote, “We are not given the power to predict...”. There is no situation that would unambiguously cause the appearance of one or another signal - people structure their statements differently depending on which elements of the situation seem more important to them in this particular case, take into account the fund of knowledge that, in their opinion, , the listener has, reflect in the statement their attitude to the situation (and often to the listener), etc., etc. The colossal redundancy that any human language possesses provides people with very wide opportunities for such variation. On the other hand, listeners have sufficient cognitive capabilities to “guess” (in most cases correctly) what meaning the speaker intended in his message.

So, perhaps, it is no coincidence that signals that do not show a direct connection either with the current situation or with the reaction of individuals perceiving the signal are found in fairly developed (with many signals) communication systems, in species with high cognitive potential, - such as chimpanzees, wolves, carpenter ants or dolphins. It cannot be excluded that upon reaching a certain level of organization, the communicative system acquires the ability to include multi-valued signals, to vary the “meaning” of the signal depending on various situationally determined parameters.

Some elements of this possibility have already been found in the studied communication systems of animals. For example, baboons have chacma ( Papio ursinus or Papio cynocephalus ursinus) there are two acoustically different “grunt” signals: one of them expresses the desire to move (as a whole group) through an open space full of dangers to another part of the forest, the other - the desire to nurse the cub. As has been established by Drew Randall, Robert Seephard, Dorothy Cini, and Michael Ouren, the response to both of these signals depends on the specific situation (for example, the signal is given at the edge of a forest plot or in the middle of it), as well as on the rank relationship of the individual giving and receiving the signal 82 . Dependence on context has also been found in such a developed communication system as pheromone communication in insects. As experiments on fruit flies have shown, the same chemical signal-pheromone “can carry different meanings depending on the context, that is, a complex of other pheromones, as well as behavioral, visual and sound signals” 83 .

Another aspect of animal research in the context of the origins of human language is the search for homologies and pre-adaptations. What properties, present in both humans and primates, and thus probably present in the common ancestor of humans and his closest relatives, were useful for the formation of language? What were the starting conditions for glottogenesis?

Studies show that monkeys have homologues of the main speech centers - Broca's area and Wernicke's area 84 . These zones correspond to human ones not only in their location, but also in their cellular composition, as well as in incoming and outgoing neural connections; in addition, these areas - both in humans and in apes - are connected to each other by a bundle of fibers (this has been shown by both domestic and foreign researchers 85 ).

But in monkeys, these parts of the brain are much less involved in auditory communication than in humans, since they are not involved in the production of signals. The homologue of Broca's area is “responsible” for automatic complex behavioral programs carried out by the muscles of the face, mouth, tongue and larynx, as well as for coordinated action programs of the right hand 86 . Wernicke's area homolog (and neighboring areas of the brain) are used to recognize sound signals, as well as to distinguish between relatives by voice. In addition, “different subregions of these homologues receive input from all parts of the brain involved in listening, touch sensation in the mouth, tongue and larynx, and areas where information flows from all senses merge.” 87 .

According to Erich Jarvis, homology can be traced in the pathways of auditory information in the brain. These pathways are similar in mammals, birds and reptiles, suggesting that the basis for sound learning was laid at least 320 million years ago. 88 .

The chimpanzee communication system uses all possible communication channels - visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile, while “most information is transmitted through two or more channels” 89 . It also contains involuntary, purely natural signals, such as the swelling of the genital skin in females, indicating receptivity, and intentional signals that one individual consciously gives to another. Sound signals belong to the first category - they are innate (at least, they arise even under conditions of deprivation, when a growing chimpanzee does not have the opportunity to adopt them from their relatives) 90 and are published involuntarily. As J. Goodall writes, “to make a sound in the absence of a suitable emotional state is an almost impossible task for a chimpanzee.” 91 . Husband and wife team Katie and Kate Hayes, who tried to teach home-bred female chimpanzee Vicki to speak, testify that she was absolutely unable to make any sounds on purpose. 92 . All a chimpanzee can do is suppress the sound. J. Goodall describes the case 93 , when the teenager Figan, to whom the researchers gave bananas, made a food cry, older males came running to the cry and took the bananas away from Figan. The next time, Figan behaved more cunningly - he suppressed the food cry with an effort of will (and got bananas), but at the same time, according to Goodall, the sounds “got stuck somewhere in his throat, and he seemed to almost suffocate.” Being associated with emotions, “chimpanzee cries form a continuous series” 94 , therefore, different researchers count different numbers of signals in the vocal repertoire of chimpanzees.

The case with Figan, by the way, is the clearest proof that the evolution of a communication system is focused on the benefits of the group, and not the individual. The tendency to signal is favored by selection even when it turns out to be rather harmful for the signaling individual, as for Figan, who lost his bananas (for the first time).

However, it is possible that the idea of the exclusively emotional nature of chimpanzee sound signals needs to be revised. According to Katie Slokombe and Klaus Zuberbühler, chimpanzee food calls are referential. The researchers tape-recorded the cries of chimpanzees who were given apples and the cries of chimpanzees who were given breadfruit. When playing tape recordings, the monkeys reliably distinguished between these two types of calls - they conducted more intensive searches under the tree whose fruits were indicated by the cry they heard. Chimpanzees from the control group, who were not played these recordings, searched under trees of both species approximately equally 95 . Similar results were obtained for bonobos - Zanna Clay and Klaus Zuberbühler identified five different food calls, emitted at different frequencies depending on the degree of food preference 96 . Even if it is not a matter of referentiality, but simply that different types of food evoke slightly different emotions in monkeys (for example, because some of them taste better than others), the ability to distinguish such signals and successfully relate them to the realities of the external world is good pre-adaptation to the language.

Perhaps another “human” property will be discovered in the sound signals of chimpanzees and bonobos - combinativity: as research shows, their so-called long calls “consist of a limited number of basic elements that can be combined differently depending on the situation and in different animals ” 97 .

Onomatopoeia is also present to some extent in chimpanzee communication: according to John Mitani and Karl Brandt 98 , males, joining the long calls of other males, strive to reproduce in their cry some acoustic parameters of the vocalization of the “interlocutor”.

In addition to sounds, chimpanzees use facial expressions, gestures, postures, actions (touching, patting, hugging, kissing, slapping, slapping), and manipulating objects. For example, to pacify the aggressor, the position of substitution can be used (the chimpanzee, as it were, is substituted for mating); Jumping up and waving your arm are aggressive signals. For the same purpose of demonstrating aggressive intentions, male chimpanzees can drag branches along the ground, roll stones, and swing bushes. Grooming strengthens friendly relations - searching fur (by the way, not only among chimpanzees, see photo 26 on the insert).

As shown by M.A. Deryagin and S.V. Vasiliev, the process of communication in monkeys - not only in apes, but also in other species (in their work they studied brown capuchins Cebus apella, cynomolgus macaques Macaca fascicularis, rhesus monkeys Macaca mulatta, brown macaques Macaca arctoides, Japanese macaques Macaca fuscata, hamadryas baboons Papio hamadryas, white-handed gibbons Hylobates lar and chimpanzees Pan troglodytes) - “represents sequences of… communication complexes” 99 . Complexes consist of elements of different modalities, for example, posture, facial expressions and gestures. Some complexes are common to all studied species, for example: “stare gaze - lunge, grin - aggressive acoustic signal - gaze - flash<быстрое движение бровями вверх. - С.Б.>- lunge” 100 , others are characteristic only of certain species. For example, only chimpanzees have recorded such a complex of communication: “a gaze - an approach - an outstretched hand - a friendly contact sound” 101 . Each individual element of such a complex can be decomposed into elementary insignificant components, for example, any element of facial expression represents the movement of a number of facial muscles - other combinations of movements of the same muscles give a different “facial expression”. Thus, it can be stated that the communication of monkeys in nature (and not just in the conditions of a “language project”) is characterized by double division.

Chimpanzees can invent ad-hoc signals, and these signals are understood by their relatives no worse than innate or long-known ones. J. Goodall’s book “Chimpanzees in the Wild: Behavior” describes such a case 102 , occurred in 1964: a male chimpanzee, Mike, saw a group of high-ranking males near the researchers' camp and went to the camp. There “he picked up two empty canisters, and, holding them by the handles, one in each hand, went (straightening up) to his previous place, sat down and stared at the other males, who were then of an increasingly higher rank compared to him. They continued to calmly search each other, not paying attention to him. A second later, Mike began to sway slightly from side to side, and his fur stood up slightly. The other males continued to ignore his presence. Gradually, Mike began to sway more, his fur became completely bristled, and with hooting sounds he suddenly rushed at his seniors, hitting the canisters in front of him. The remaining males ran away. Sometimes Mike repeated his performance four times in a row...” As a result of such actions, Mike was able to convey to his relatives the idea that he should be recognized as senior in rank - and he retained this rank for many years.

Chimpanzees can slightly change the meaning of signals, taking into account the current situation. Goodall describes an incident in which an adult male Figan (the same one who, as a teenager, could not scream at the sight of bananas) used a sign to entice another male, Jomeo, to help him hunt the piglets of a brush-eared pig. He, “taking a close look at the thickets where the pig and her brood had disappeared, turned to Jomeo and made a characteristic gesture, shaking a branch - this is how males usually call females to themselves during courtship. Jomeo hurried to him, both rushed into the thicket, and one pig was caught.” 103 .

Ad-hoc signals can be fixed and transmitted according to tradition - different for different populations. For example, chimpanzees living in the Mahale Mountains, courting females, nibble leaves with a loud sound, and chimpanzees of the Tai National Park, in a similar situation, tap their knuckles on the trunk of a small tree 104 . On the other hand, among the chimpanzees of Bossou (Guinea), loud gnawing of leaves is considered an invitation to play. 105 . According to Simone Pica and John Mitani 106 , the chimpanzees of the Ngogo community in Kibale National Park (Uganda) use the “loud scratch” gesture to indicate a specific place on their body that the groomer is invited to search. The same type of gesture - an exaggeratedly noticeable loud scratching of the side - is used by the Gombe chimpanzees in another function: thus, a mother sitting on the lower branches of a tree calls on her offspring, who has climbed higher, to climb on her in order to descend to the ground together 107 . Russian primatologist Leonid Aleksandrovich Firsov, having observed the behavior of chimpanzees in laboratory and field conditions for many years, repeatedly witnessed how monkeys “invented” their own ad-hoc signals 108 - both sound and gestures - to attract attention. These (non-innate!) forms of communication allowed them to successfully achieve contact with people who could not only “communicate” with the animals and, say, caress them, but also let them out of the enclosure or treat them to something tasty. If this or that “sign” led to success, the animal repeated it the next time, in addition, this signal was adopted (by imitation) by other monkeys who saw its successful use. The female chimpanzee Elya, moved for several years from the Rostov Zoo to Koltushi, learned many of these signals from the local chimpanzees, and then, when she returned to Rostov, these non-innate elements of communicative behavior were adopted from her by other chimpanzees. As L.A. writes Firsov, “a more than interesting fact” 109 .

Chimpanzees are also able to deliberately give their actions increased visibility, thereby investing in them a communicative component - this is evidenced by the case discussed above (Chapter 3), when a chimpanzee mother showed her daughter how to crack nuts. The action, which in ordinary situations serves purely practical needs, was performed more slowly and clearly than was necessary in order to crack a nut, and its purpose was clearly that the daughter could acquire knowledge of how to hold a stone in her hand in such a situation.

As J. Goodall writes, chimpanzees “show great ingenuity in communicative acts. The actual signals given by a male during courtship vary both within the same male in different situations and among different males; the female almost certainly reacts to the totality of various signals, and not to individual elements.” 110 .

The basis for such a free transformation of actions into signals is that chimpanzees can “anticipate the likely nature of the reaction of their relatives to their own behavior or to the actions of other chimpanzees and modify their actions in accordance with this”, as well as “carefully notice various kinds of involuntary, undirected details behavior of their relatives, which can serve as random signals” 111 . Since chimpanzees are smart enough to correctly interpret the plastic behavior of their relatives and take it into account when constructing their own line of behavior, they can easily be forced to interpret those elements of behavior that their relatives can specifically make especially noticeable - in this case, ad-hoc signals are obtained . The boundary between simple behavior and signals is quite fragile, since even actions completely devoid of a signal component can be understood by relatives who will change their own behavior in connection with this. We can talk about signaling only insofar as chimpanzees deliberately accompany some of their actions with special details that help increase visibility.

Thus, it can be seen that chimpanzees have quite a lot of properties useful for the development of language. Probably, they were also present in the common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans - and even if they developed independently, this can be considered as another manifestation of the law of homological series in hereditary variability formulated by Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (“species and genera that are genetically close are characterized by similar series of hereditary variability with such regularity that, knowing a number of forms within one species, one can foresee the presence of parallel forms in other species and genera.”

Extremely interesting patterns in the evolution of communication systems within the order of primates were revealed by M.A. Deryagin and S.V. Vasiliev 112 . According to their data, although all primates use many channels of information transmission - visual, acoustic and olfactory (olfactory), - in different taxa the most important role in communication is assigned to different channels. In prosimians - lemurs and galagos - the leading role belongs to the olfactory canal, in broad-nosed monkeys the acoustic channel comes to the fore (in some, along with the olfactory one), in narrow-nosed monkeys (except for humans) - the visual. In more progressive taxa, not only does total number signals, but there is also a redistribution of the shares of signals of different types in the communication inventory. For example, the number of different postures and tactile elements increases in chimpanzees compared to lower apes approximately doubled, and the number of gestures - 4–5 times 113 . The similarity between individual signals (both formal and “semantic”) makes it possible to assume that the most archaic communicative elements are postures (“they occur with approximately the same frequency in all species we studied,” write M.A. Deryagina and S.V. . Vasiliev 114 ). Gestures, on the contrary, turn out to be the most progressive - they are “younger” not only than postures, but also facial expressions. Another evolutionary trend is an increase in the number of friendly signals in the repertoire. Of the 13 communication complexes common to all studied types, “10 are associated with the aggressive context of behavior” 115 . “Probably, the primary function of communication complexes was to prevent aggression, especially its contact destructive forms” 116 . Subsequently, friendly elements of communication develop - their number increases in more progressive species compared to more primitive ones; in chimpanzees they develop into special friendly complexes. In addition, chimpanzees increase the connection between “gestures and sounds in the friendly sphere of communication” 117 . The most progressive feature of a communication system is the ability to “combine elements into complexes and recombine them in a new situation” 118 - it manifests itself most clearly in bonobos in friendly social contacts. This evolutionary path of development of the communicative system - from aggressive contacts to friendly and cooperative ones - seems to be very important for the formation of human language.

General patterns of evolution hold true for a wide variety of taxa. Therefore, during the formation of language, it is natural to expect that processes such as the appearance of “increased salience” components in signals (easily registered by detectors), the transformation of iconic signals into symbolic ones, emotional ones into referential ones, innate ones into learned ones, the emergence of the ability to transmit information about that is not directly in the observation field, and also compress information. All these processes are an integral property of the development of communication systems in nature.

Something else needs to be explained. Since communication, as already mentioned, is very expensive, such expenses can only be incurred in the name of something truly vital. Therefore, the “sphere of action” of the communication system in animals includes only the most important moments for the life of the species. And this gives rise to the inevitable limitations of communication systems found in nature. Accordingly, a hypothesis about the origin of language must certainly answer the question of what environmental factors became so vitally important for our ancestors that they needed just such a communicative system (with a huge number of concepts - from the most concrete to the most abstract). In addition, it must also explain at what point and for what reasons (and in what hominid species) the energy budget acquired such characteristics that the maintenance of such a colossal communication system became possible without a threat to general fitness - and perhaps hominids (by at least from some time) began to produce so much “extra” energy that the development of language could continue even when there was no longer a strict need for this.

Communication in Animals

Currently, there are three main approaches to the study of animal communication in zoopsychology.

Attempts to directly decipher signals. You can simply observe animals in various situations of their life in communities and, based on reliable correlations between previous and subsequent events, draw conclusions about the information transmission systems used by animals (correlation method). Data were obtained on signals used by a number of bird species in mating behavior, informing about the found sources of food in the honey bee, informing about various dangerous animals in green monkeys (“eagle”, “snake”, “leopard”), etc. Often the observation method supplemented by experiment. The method of layouts or models, used in studying the information transmission system of marigold butterflies, made it possible to establish which particular set of features of female butterfly models causes a positive reaction from males (color - black, size - large, 4.5 times larger than natural, shape is not important , movements – dancing, fluttering, and not uniform). Using an experiment involving presenting vervet monkeys with recordings of the calls of their relatives, emitted in various anxiety situations, but with altered acoustic characteristics and in the absence of real danger, it was found that monkeys in these cases behave in accordance with the semantic meanings of the signals. “Dictionaries” of corresponding signals were compiled for many species of animals: insects, birds (woodpeckers, chickens, jays), mammals (rodents, dolphins, lemurs, monkeys).

Attempts to teach animals to use any communication system that is not inherent to a given species (teaching intermediary languages, artificial languages). The work was carried out with monkeys (lower monkeys - baboons and macaques, as well as anthropoids, with the exception of gibbons), dolphins, pinnipeds and parrots. Systems of gestures, plastic tokens, icons (lexigrams) printed on a computer keyboard, sounds created using a synthesizer, and words of spoken English were used as communication systems. Animals were trained using various training options, including through imitation. It has been established that representatives of all of the listed animal taxa are capable, within certain limits for each species, of mastering the imposed communication system and using it quite successfully, in some cases combining learned symbols to designate new objects and situations.

Information-theoretic approach. The essence of this original approach (Zh.I. Reznikova) is that in experiments animals are given the task of transmitting a certain (previously known to the experimenter) amount of information, and the time spent on its transmission is measured, i.e. the speed of information transmission is assessed. In laboratory experiments with red wood ants, it was shown that scout ants transmit to foragers absolutely accurate information about which of the terminal “leaves” of an artificial “binary tree” (a special labyrinth) contains the bait (syrup). Information is transmitted using tactile contact - through an “antenna code”. The longer the sequence of turns was, i.e., the more information had to be transmitted, the more time the scout ant tactilely, with the help of antennae, contacted its 4–7 foragers. Having received the information, the foragers quickly, with virtually no mistakes on turns, reached the desired “leaf” and “tree” (a new, odorless scout ant). The described experiments show that ants, like bees (which was first discovered by K. Frisch in the honey bee), are characterized by the so-called. remote guidance, i.e. transmitting information remotely: for bees - using a “dance”, for ants - an “antenna code”.

Sources for all articles in Section 16: Lopatina N. G. Naumov N. P. Biological (signal) fields and their significance in the life of mammals // Advances in modern theriology. M., 1977; Reznikova Zh. I. Community structure and animal communication. Novosibirsk, 1997; It's her. Intelligence and language. Animals and humans in the mirror of the experiment. M., 2000; It's her. Intelligence and language of animals and humans. Fundamentals of cognitive ethology. M., 2005; Fabry K.E. Fundamentals of zoopsychology. M., 1976; It's him. Phylogenetic background of human methods of communication. Bulletin of Moscow State University. Ser. 14. Psychology. 1977. No. 2; Fridman V.S. Space and time of social life of animals: a resource of the present or a cognitive matrix of future behavior? // World of Psychology. 1999. No. 4; It's him. Ritualized demonstrations of vertebrates in the process of communication: sign and stimulus // Master class for “Pantopoda”. M., 2007; Frisch K. From the life of bees. M., 1980.

Editor-compiler N. N. Meshkova

Biological signal field of animals(the term was proposed by N.P. Naumov): 1. Changes introduced by the vital activity of animals into the environment and acquiring informational value for representatives of a given species, and sometimes for representatives of other species. 2. All information available to animals, as directly received from the animal living on the site. territory, and indirectly - from traces of animal activity in a given territory. Traces of vital activity that have informational value are quite species-specific. For example, for a brown bear, this is “tearing up” the bark of trees at the height of its growth (while standing on its hind limbs), for gerbils – the construction of “signal mounds” or “guardhouses” from soil saturated with its own secretions, for a domestic cat – marked with special marking urination “stand out” objects - tree trunks, corners of buildings, car wheels, for the Amur tiger - “scrapes” made with claws, and urinary marks on vertical surfaces of objects that also “stand out” in some way - size, unusual shape of the trunk, growths ( trees), separately located large stones. In territorial mammal species, permanent and temporary shelters and a network of trails connecting them also acquire informational significance. For insects (ants), scent trails left on paths diverging from the anthill in the direction of feeding areas are also of informational value. Bees, having found an abundant source of food, mark this place with the help of a special gland; the scent left allows other bees to receive the information transmitted during the “dance” of the scout ( "dancing" of bees), it is easier to detect this food source. For B. s. p.f. in value 2, to the sources of information listed above should be added information transmitted using special signals directly from animal to animal ( animal signals).

N. N. Meshkova

Demonstrations in animals– motor patterns involved in animal communication are largely genetically determined and characteristic of each species. Demonstrations are the result of the process ritualization. Demonstrations are characterized by stereotyping, expressiveness, exaggerated performance, and fixed movements. Thanks to this, they stand out as discrete behavioral structures that allow partners to recognize them as signals against the background of non-signal activity and respond appropriately. Research in recent years has shown that in a wide variety of animal species with different In an intragroup organization, the core event of communication processes is the exchange of information. Ritualized demonstrations are those structures whose function in the process of communication is the transfer of clearly delimited pieces of information from one animal to another and back (V.S. Friedman). Displays that function as signals involved in communication, described, for example, in beckoning crabs, in various species of fish, lizards, birds and mammals.

N. N. Meshkova

Visual communication in animals– transmission and reception of information through vision. The visual communication channel provides emergency information from considerable distances and is very effective in quality. means of remote communication. In addition, there is no rapid attenuation of the signal, as in acoustic communication: while the animals are within sight of each other, they are constant mutual sources of visual information. In visual communication, two types of signals are used: distant, operating over long distances, and near, operating over short distances. An example of the first are nonspecific signals that arise as a consequence of the very presence of individuals in each other’s field of vision: vultures, vultures and other scavenger birds of prey track each other, flying at a considerable altitude and at a great distance from each other while searching for food. A sharp decrease in the height of one of the birds serves as a signal to the others about the possible discovery of carrion or a wounded animal. An example of the second is visual contacts between animals during courtship and caring for offspring: signaling postures and body movements in family pairs of cichlid fish. Visual communication serves various spheres of animal life: territorial, sexual, parent-child behavior, other spheres of intraspecific interaction, such as agonistic, friendly contacts, cooperative behavior, the emergence and maintenance of “traditions” - effective methods of action of a facultative nature.

Visual signals are often complemented by acoustic and tactile ones, forming complex communication complexes. For example, in chimpanzees, a communicative complex is observed, including a special facial expression - “game face”, gesture, tactile influence and vocal reaction, in a situation where adolescents interact when invited to play together.

N. N. Meshkova

Demonstration manipulation– a special way (type) of information transmission described by the author in monkeys (hamadryas baboons, rhesus macaques): one animal, usually a high-ranking one, emphatically, “deliberately” shows the object of manipulation to other members of the community and demonstratively, provocatively manipulates it in full view group members observing his actions. In addition to the demonstrative display of an object and the actions performed with it, such a monkey can tease the “spectators” by moving the object towards one of them, but immediately pulls it back and noisily “attacks” as soon as another monkey extends its hand to it. Aggressive manifestations on the part of the demonstrating monkey are suppressed by the “spectators” through special, conciliatory movements and postures. Such demonstration manipulation is observed predominantly. in adult monkeys, but not in infants. This behavior shows, according to K. E. Fabry, all the signs demonstrations, but at the same time it has a significant and important cognitive function. Observing monkeys have the opportunity to remotely obtain such information about the properties of the object of manipulation, which is usually revealed only during direct handling of the objects. They are able to follow the structural changes of an object without coming into direct contact with it, since the “actor” performs all destructive and other manipulations in full view of them, as if “one for all.” The result of demonstration manipulation can be imitative actions of “spectators”. It depends on how much the actions of the “demonstrator” stimulated the other monkeys. But the object of manipulation always acts as a kind of intermediary in communication between the “actor” and the “spectators”. The latter also receive information about the manipulating individual itself, whose actions contain elements of “impression.”

Demonstrative manipulation is directly related to the formation of “traditions” in monkeys, which has now been described in detail in many species of both lower and great apes. This way of transmitting information about objects is considered by K. E. Fabry in quality. one of the most important prerequisites for human methods of communication, since it is here that best conditions for joint communicative and cognitive activities.

N. N. Meshkova

Ritualized behavior in animals– species-typical behavioral patterns, which were modified in the process of ritualization and began to perform communicative functions. These patterns are usually stereotypical in form and incomplete in their execution. Ritualized behavior often has a specific, species-typical intensity. For example, a black woodpecker drums on a tree when hollowing out a hollow for a nest. He also drums on dry branches to indicate the occupancy of the territory. In the latter case, the sound has a characteristic rhythm and is stereotypical in comparison with the sound when hollowing out a hollow. Ritualized behavior is also characterized by changes in motivation. An example is ritualized courtship feeding in many bird species. Females often beg for food from males caring for them using behavior that in other cases is observed only when begging for food by young animals. In a begging situation, females are not particularly hungry; their behavior is clearly ritualized and has a different motivation than in normal begging for food.

N. N. Meshkova

Releasers, or key stimuli(from English to release - to release, let go, reset), - signs of the components of the environment, including signs, the carriers of which are the animals themselves, as well as demonstrations, performed by them, which are stimulus signals, triggering responses. The tendency of animals to give and respond to such signals is defined. actions - innate. A response to the action of a key stimulus is inevitable if the animal is in an appropriate motivational state and is receptive to this stimulus. However, it has been shown for many species of birds and mammals living in communities that members of the community respond to releasers of their species only when they come from the def. individuals known to the animal personally. In this case, this is the result of establishing individual connections in the learning process. Sounds (the cries of frogs and toads), smells (odorous scales in a male butterfly), touch (the soft touch of a partner in a grape snail, vigorous pushing of a female by a male stickleback), various visual stimuli (a red spot on the beak of an adult herring gull), can function as releasers. movements (during demonstrations associated with threat and courtship in the herring gull).

N. N. Meshkova

Ritualization in animals– an evolutionary process through which certain types of animal activity are elements of displaced and redirected activity, expressive movements, movements of intention that provide definition. information to another animal - turn into stereotypical patterns of behavior and acquire a signaling function. For example, with the help of ritualization of displaced cleaning of feathers with the beak, a ritualized cleaning has developed, which is observed during courtship in many species of ducks. It is more stereotypical than normal beak preening and is aimed at particularly conspicuous feathers. As a result of ritualization, the elements of the above activities become demonstrations.

N. N. Meshkova

Animal signaling– implementation of communicative interaction between individuals in a community with the help of signaling means, through which the partner or partners are encouraged to specific species-typical responses. This is, for example, mutual signaling in family pairs of cichlid fish during the period of caring for fry, and in family pairs of herring gulls during the period of incubation and feeding of chicks. The effect on the partner depends on the level of motivation of the demonstrator and, accordingly, the intensity of the signal given. In quality Signals of this kind are expressed by expressive movements and postures, as well as their combinations - demonstrations. According to the mechanism of its effect on the partner, the latter refers to key stimuli or to releasers.

N. N. Meshkova

Animal signals- means with the help of which, during interactions, they influence each other by transmitting information. Signals are structures of behavior consisting of def. behavioral elements - expressive movements, postures, expressive actions, sounds or their complexes, as well as morphostructures, which animals demonstrate with the help of appropriate movements. Signals are divided according to the method of implementing the signaling function into stimulus signals and signals in the proper sense of the word (symbols or signs). Stimulus signals induce the animal to respond here and now. This category of signals includes key irritants, or releasers. The initiating animal performs the def. species-typical demonstration and, in response, another animal performs a def. also a species-typical reaction, but only if this animal is in the appropriate motivational state and is receptive to this stimulus. For example, by opening its brightly colored mouth wide, the chick (in many species of passerine birds) encourages its parents to put the food they brought into its mouth. This type of influence on a partner is classified as manipulation. With the help of incentives, the animal manipulates the behavior of its partner.

Signals in the proper sense of the word (symbols or signs) convey information, and do not have an impact here and now (like stimuli). The animal to whom this information is addressed can use it immediately, or perhaps much later, as soon as the corresponding situation arises again, i.e. in this case the animal has freedom of choice. For example, in experiments performed on chickens (Evans), it was shown that a specific hide-and-flight response is evoked by both a specific “danger call from the air” and a stylized image of a “hawk” when moved over the chickens. But each chicken adopts a strategy independently, based on its own position relative to the danger and its own circumstances. The same feature, namely the absence of an unambiguous reaction to signals about the appearance of dangerous objects, was demonstrated in green monkeys, diana monkeys, catta lemurs, and desert mongooses and meerkats. When studying the functioning of this kind of signals in animal communities, it was also found that these signals are quite independent of the context and correlate specifically with the definition. categories of events significant for the species in its habitat. Thus, catta lemurs emit a “danger cry from the air” to any appearance of feathered predators, regardless of where the lemur itself is located, or how quickly the speed of the predator’s approach to the animal itself changes (Pereira, Macedonia). And green monkeys made an “eagle call” when the bird was far enough away, and in the final stages of an attack, when screaming monkeys have almost no chance of escape (Cheney, Seyfarth). Signal combining has recently been described in great white-nosed monkeys. This species has two basic calls related to potentially dangerous objects: the “leopard call from the ground” and the “eagle call from the air.” The combination of both calls gives a signal with a new meaning of “extreme, extreme danger”, in response to which the monkeys of the entire group immediately move from their place and move quickly over a long distance (Arnold, Zuberbtihler).

Signals similar to those described are called “referential signals”, i.e. related to the definition. categories of significant objects in external animal world (Evans). Zh. I. Reznikova uses a literal translation "categorical signal". V.S. Fridman considers it more appropriate in meaning to translate this term as "signal-symbol" or "signal-sign". Unlike signals of the first type - stimuli that function between two (three) individuals who have come together to interact - signals of this type - symbols or signs - function at the level of the entire community. Therefore, messages sent by such signals retain significance and communicative value outside the “space and time” of the specific situation when the signal was given, while stimulus signals lose it. Functioning in a community of animals as an integral system, signals-signs or “names” def. categories of significant events in the surrounding animal world, allow us to establish def. correspondence of signals and events, i.e. transmit def. pieces of information from one individual to another and back, if they regularly and actively participate in both the perception and generation of such signals-signs.

In animal communities, important information for them can be contained not only in the signals described above, but also in traces of animal activity. In these cases, the animal receives information indirectly through objects exposed to the animal's influence. The habitat transformed by animals not only allows them to navigate in space, but also serves as an additional important source of information both at the species and interspecific levels. The aggregate information transmitted directly from one animal to another using signals and indirectly through traces of activity in the environment is called the “biological signal field” (N.P. Naumov). In relation to at least monkeys, we can talk about one more way - a third way or type of information transfer - about complex information transfer, which combines both previous types: the actions of the animal and their results. Complex information transfer occurs when monkeys observe manipulations with objects, especially. destructive, carried out demonstratively in front of them by another monkey (K. E. Fabry). This manipulation is called “demonstration manipulation.”

Arnold K., Zuberbtihler K. Semantic combinations in primate calls // Nature. 2006. 441. 18 May; Pereira M. E., Macedonia J. M. Ringtailed lemur antipredator calls denote predator class, not response urgency. Animal Behavior 41. 1991; Cheney D., Seyfarth R. How monkeys see the world: Inside the mind of another species. Chicago; Evans C. Referential signal // Perspectives in ethology. 1997. V. 12.

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Tactile information– exchange of information between animals based on physical contacts. Due to its nature, tactile communication is only possible at close range. It is widespread in the animal world, especially pronounced in species with an exclusively “social” way of life. Among insects, these are, for example, ants, in which the transmission of information about the found food using an “antenna code” is described, bees, in which the transmission of information about the place of mass flowering of plants is described using a “dance language”, including a tactile component . Tactile communication is also important for vertebrates. So, for example, a female stickleback, before laying eggs in a nest made by a male from plants, needs a series of pushes, which he does by poking his snout at the base of her tail. Chimpanzees have physical contacts with other individuals – main. a component of communicative influences aimed at encouraging or calming another animal. Tactile contacts are used, in particular, as a greeting after separation, as a sign of reconciliation after an aggressive confrontation (Goodall). Tactile communication is expressed in touching each other with the hand, patting, hugging, kissing. One of the most important types of tactile contact in monkeys is grooming, or searching the fur. Animals that are in close friendly relations, for example, a mother and her grown offspring, two adult males or females, when they meet after separation, usually, after greeting each other, sit down and engage in mutual searching for a long time. The latter is also effective in reducing tension between two adult males if there is tension between them. Aggressive tactile contacts, such as a slap, hit, slap, or bite, are often observed. The researchers emphasize that this kind of influence works effectively to maintain order in the chimpanzee community.

Goodall J. Chimpanzees in nature: behavior. M., 1992.

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Dancing bees- a complex communication system that allows scout bees, with the help of information of an abstract nature, through the so-called. remote guidance inform worker bees about places of abundant flowering plants they have found (Frisch), as well as “quartermaster” bees (these are always the oldest bees in the hive) inform other bees during swarming about a suitable place they have found for housing (Lindauer; Lewis, Schneider ). The “dance” takes place inside the hive, in complete darkness (for observation purposes, single-frame glass hives are used in experiments), on the vertical surface of the honeycomb. K. Frisch described three types of “dance” that inform about the distance of the food source. 1) “Push dance”: the bee runs randomly through the honeycombs, wagging its belly from time to time (if it finds food at a distance of two to five meters from the hive); 2) “circle dance”, consisting of running in a circle alternately clockwise and counterclockwise (if food is detected at a distance of up to 100 m); 3) “waggling dance” - jogging in a straight line, accompanied by wagging of the abdomen with the bee returning to the starting point, either on the left or on the right (if food is found at a great distance from the hive). As K. Frisch showed, the distance to the food source correlates with 11 parameters of the “dance,” for example, its duration, tempo, number of belly wiggles, and duration of sound signals. During the “waggle dance,” the bee also transmits information about the direction in which it needs to fly: the angle between the running line and the vertical corresponds to the angle between the bee’s flight line from the hive to the food source and the direction towards the sun. Moreover, if it should fly towards the sun, the bee “dances” from bottom to top, but if from the sun, then from top to bottom. Bees receive additional information, namely scent, by sniffing the scout, whose hairy body is sprinkled with flower pollen. In addition, the “dancing” bee stops from time to time and shares nectar from the flowers it discovers with the bees moving behind it in “dance” figures. Later it was shown (Lopatina) that young foraging bees are not able to fully perceive the information contained in the “dance” and are forced to complete their studies.

Skeptics for a long time did not recognize the reality of the “dances” of bees described by K. Frisch. Were carried out to check numerous. research. The very description of the phenomenon of the “dance” of bees was supplemented with new details. An important discovery, which unconditionally confirmed the correctness of K. Frisch, was made in a study, the authors of which used it in quality. Scout bees are an electronic robotic bee controlled by a computer program. The model, made of brass and coated with a thin layer of wax, performs a “waggle dance”, making vibrating and oscillating movements and producing sounds generated by a synthesizer. Every three minutes, the computer makes adjustments to the “dance” of the robot bee, taking into account the changed position of the sun. Every ten cycles of the “dance” she secretes a drop of flavored syrup, which is eaten by the bees following her. It was found that 80% of the bees that followed the “dancing” robot bee flew to the location indicated (Michelsen et al.). The phenomenon discovered by K. Frisch in the honey bee - the ability for remote guidance - was later described in dolphins (Evans, Bastian), chimpanzees (Menzel), and ants (Zh. I. Reznikova).

Lopatina N. G. Signaling activity in the honey bee (Apis melifera) colony. L., 1971; Frisch K.?ber die Spriche der Bienen. Zool. Jahrb. Von. 1923, V. 40; Lindauer M. Communication among Social Bees. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Univ. Press, 1961; Michelson A. The dance language of honeybees: recent findings and problems // Peter Marler Book, 1998.

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Animal language– 1. Signals and mechanisms of communication of animal species forming communities. 2. A specialized sign system, in which a system of differentiated signs corresponds to differentiated categories of external objects. peace. Animal language in meaning 1 is a traditional understanding of this term shared by many specialists - ethologists, zoopsychologists. In quality the signals that form the “language” can be visual, acoustic, chemical, tactile, electrical means of communication and methods of their transmission (visual, acoustic, chemical communication). The “language” of animals in meaning 2 is the understanding of this term in a stricter sense of the word - only as communication using a system of signals-symbols or signs. That this kind of communication can really be found in animals is shown by studies of the last decade, carried out on different species of vertebrates, primarily birds and mammals (Friedman; Cheney, Seyfarth; Evans; etc.). At the heart of systems research alarm higher animals - combining the usual comparative ethological approach to the analysis of behavior with a semiotic approach and separating the old, evolutionarily earlier system of signal-stimuli from the evolutionarily younger system of signals-symbols (signs). From the book How to Treat Yourself and People [Other edition] author Kozlov Nikolay Ivanovich

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