Talk:Human–animal communication/Archive 1

Untitled
Do you think BowLingual is notable enough for an article? It's recieved media coverage, and was named one of 2002's best inventions by Time Magazine. -- Gray  Porpois  e Phocoenidae, not Delphinidae 22:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Nah, don't bother, there's already one at Bow-Lingual. (Incidentally, I don't think the product name is hypenated). Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  23:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing me to that. To match this article and the other that mentioned it, I moved Bow-Lingual to a title without the hyphen. -- Gray  Porpois  e Phocoenidae, not Delphinidae 00:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Would appreciate more links to scientific research if anyone can post - will try to find some as I learn more about this subject. IMHO, too many references to fiction and popular culture at the end of the article that are only superficially related to interpecies communication. There's been a lot of scientific research into human-cetation communication - I will also try to summarize as I learn more. This is a call to all subject matter experts to increase the scientific and referenced content in this article. Gwinerreniwg 23:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

change of title
this article badly needs a change of title. the current title implies that humans are somehow not 'animals.' we are in fact animals, and the title should reflect that. perhaps something like 'human-nonhuman communication' or 'human communication with other animals' or a merge with or taking over the 'interspecies communication' title. 72.244.201.231 08:13, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This could use a lot more general focus on human and animal communication. The tidbits on dogs and parrots and dolphins are nice but there is a lot more animals in the world that communicate other than these three. The pieces at the end, the games and tv show links are a little off topic. This is not a history of animal and human communication, this should be focused around the science and comparisons of communication between humans and animals (or non humans)... Also, would you say humans are a different type of living thing other than an animal? Would you call a bug an animal? I'd support leaving the title as is. 67.176.76.119 06:50, 9 April 2007 (UTC)LEVI

May I suggest of the tittle: "Interspecies Communication" (still with this current article as a redirect to that name) not only humans communicate or can understand animals, other animals can too, some live in Symbiosis and they have learned to communicate between them and understand each other. Alusky (talk) 20:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC) hay how are you my frriend ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.24.55.65 (talk) 01:09, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

John Lilly and cetacean communication - Ethics
Are there any objections to including some general details of the eventual ethical issues with the Howe/Peter experiment? While disturbing they are germane to the conversation and, in fact, the basis for some of the most conclusive portions of the study. Jaydubya93 (talk) 13:22, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

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Dolphin-human communication
The Lilly and cetacean communication section covers dolphin work by both Lilly's group and Herman's group, but no other cetaceans. So I retitled it as Communication with dolphins, with subsections for each research group. I'd love to see other cetaceans added. Certainly trainers have extensive communication with orcas and belugas, so they need to be added.

Furthermore the Herman section has a long discussion of dolphins' ability to recognize shapes by sight or sound, and their intelligence. However it does not cover the human-animal communication aspect of this work (asking for shape recognition and getting responses). That's the purpose of this Wikipedia entry, and it still needs to be added, to justify having this in the article (it's already in the separate article about Lilly). I added information on Herman's extensive whistle language with dolphins, and work from several other researchers. Numbersinstitute (talk) 05:19, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 29 August 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) Steel1943  (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Human–animal communication → Human-nonhuman communication – "Human-animal communication" doesn't make all that sense, really. Humans are members of the animal kingdom so the whole human/animal opposition doesn't sit well with everyone -- see the discussion above. While some might argue towards a human/animal distinction, everyone can agree that humans are not nonhumans. Mychemicalromanceisrealemo (talk) 06:39, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. There is no practical possibility of misunderstanding the current title at all–in everyday language, categories of "human" and "animal" do not overlap, and even in case of potential ambiguity context helps resolving it: here, it is understood that "animal" refers to animals other than humans. The proposed title fails all five WP:CRITERIA, because "nonhumans" apart from animals may include aliens, toys, computers, and whatnot. A reference book on the subject is titled "Perspectives on Human-Animal Communication". No such user (talk) 10:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose The word "animal" as used by English speakers is mainly a cultural term not a scientific term. For example, animal law, animal rights, animal cruelty and terms like that — none of them concerns humans or invertebrate animals. (Most "animal lovers" don't give second thoughts to giving their pets Frontline, Advantage, Heartgard, etc. to kill parasitic animals like fleas, ticks, lice, and tapeworms.) Timmyshin (talk) 11:46, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment, the idea is a good one but the suggested name doesn't define the topic. As stated above, non-human communication can be many things, such as talking to one of those search-engine voices on phones, commands to toys, etc. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:39, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose: humans are indeed from Kingdom Animalia but everyday usage of "animal" refers to animals which aren't humans. Furthermore, "non-human" is a bit vague.  It could refer to talking to plants for example.    Dr Strauss   talk   16:00, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually plants wouldn't fit the proposed title, as communication implies a two-way understanding. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:12, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Idk, phytosemiotics would disagree.--Mychemicalromanceisrealemo (talk) 20:48, 29 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose per all of the above. This proposal doesn't even make sense from a semantic logic perspective. Many words in English do double, triple, etc., duty with additional (and sometimes narrower or broader) meanings.  The very structure of the construction indicates that A is distinct from B, not a part of B as it might be in some other construction. A direct comparison is "meat" and "animal" used to be mean "flightless land animal and the meat thereof" in distinction to fish and fowl, a distinction drawn by many Christians.  No one's brain melts when they encounter "I don’t eat meat but I do eat fish and chicken"; we know that "meat" in this construction means "red meat", a.k.a. mammal meat.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:37, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose. The proposed title is very ambiguous. Does the OP imply to include human-computer, and human-smartphone communication into the article? Khestwol (talk) 09:18, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose: I like getting rid of the false "human-animal" contrast, but "human-nonhuman" is worse. The wikipedia article on non-human refers to it as "displaying some, but not enough, human characteristics to be considered a human." That definition doesn't track with Merriam or Oxford dictionaries, but would probably exclude communication with birds and dolphins, which are legitimately animals in this article. I also agree with the concerns above about bringing aliens, toys, etc. into this article; they are and should be in separate articles, not in this one. However the current title is not ideal on the criteria of Recognizability, Naturalness and Precision, since a contrast between human and animal, while common, is anachronistic and uncomfortable for many. The article on non-human says some animal rights advocates distinguish between "human animals" and "non-human animals" (with a pretty broad usage going far beyond primates). So another option for this article is "Communication between human animals and non-human animals", or "Communication between human and non-human animals". What do others think? Numbersinstitute (talk) 17:33, 31 August 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Citation formats
On 27 Sept 2017, Trappist the monk and Davemck removed the WorldCat link in some book citations. That link was created as a default by ProveIt, which generated the link from the ISBN. I realize the ISBN itself is a link to a page, where WorldCat is one of the options. However I think concerns about a ProveIt default link need more discussion, probably on Wikipedia talk:ProveIt, rather than immediate manual deletions scattered through Wikipedia. Kim9988 (talk) 17:05, 27 September 2017 (UTC)


 * For the record, I came to this article because it was listed in Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls because a had 2 url= parms: one to WorldCat and one to an online PDF of the book. I fixed the error by removing the WorldCat url=. According to the documentation for, the url= parm is for "URL of an online location where the text of the publication can be found". So it looks to me that a url= pointing to WorldCat doesn't follow the documentation. I don't know anything about ProveIt (hadn't heard of it before this post), but I'd say it's not a good idea to point url= to WorldCat. Davemck (talk) 20:42, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that makes sense. As long as that book is online, there's no need for a worldcat link, and for the others worldcat isn't the right place to find text online. I'll post a query on the ProveIt talk page about their automatic worldcat links Kim9988 (talk) 18:14, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

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Birds and Primates
This article is severely deficient. It even suggests that evidence put forth by Alex the parrot never came to light. This page must be updated to include Koko, the gorilla and Alex the parrot. It should also include the failed experiments of Washoe and some of the chimps with whom the research was flawed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.170.14.13 (talk) 03:17, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

On May 30, 2018, @Pe19 made improvements and dropped an unnecessary in-text mention of a book. However that left this statement without a citation: "sentient talking parrots and similar birds are common in children's fiction" so I plan to put the book back in as a footnote supporting the "common" statement, unless others have a better citation. Kim9988 (talk) 12:49, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Criticism as Praxis
— Preceding unsigned comment added by NEMO LEGEND (talk • contribs) 23:22, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Inquiry
Hello wiki-editors! I am an anthropology student who has been assigned with editing this wiki page. I was wondering if it would be appropriate if I added the origins of human-canine communication, specifically their domestication before the end of the late Pleistocene. I was thinking I would add information on theories as to why humans communicated with wolves which eventually became the domesticated dogs that we know today, but if this belongs in a different wikipedia please let me know. I know that there is an article on domestication that does have a section on canines, but there is little to no mention of how and why they communicated with one another. Perhaps I should simply add this information there, but I am unsure. I also plan on adding felines to this list, as there has been recent research on human-cat communication which strongly supports evidence of an understood communication between these two species. This is my first time editing a wikipedia page, so please let me know if you have any pointers. Thank you :) MattAnthStudent (talk) 17:50, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Wildlife Ecology and Management
— Assignment last updated by Lexi 3232 (talk) 13:51, 9 September 2022 (UTC)