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Prairie dogs' language decoded by scientists
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/06/21/science-prairie-dog-language-decoded.htmlDid that prairie dog just call you fat? Quite possibly. On The Current Friday, biologist Con Slobodchikoff described how he learned to understand what prairie dogs are saying to one another and discovered how eloquent they can be.
Slobodchikoff, a professor emeritus at North Arizona University, told Erica Johnson, guest host of The Current, that he started studying prairie dog language 30 years ago after scientists reported that other ground squirrels had different alarm calls to warn each other of flying predators such as hawks and eagles, versus predators on the ground, such as coyotes or badgers.
Prairie dogs, he said, were ideal animals to study because they are social animals that live in small co-operative groups within a larger colony, or "town" and they never leave their colony or territory, where they have built an elaborate underground complex of tunnels and burrows.
In order to figure out what the prairie dogs were saying, Slobodchikoff and his colleagues trapped them and painted them with fur dye to identify each one. Then they recorded the animals' calls in the presence of different predators.
Slobodchikoff, a professor emeritus at North Arizona University, told Erica Johnson, guest host of The Current, that he started studying prairie dog language 30 years ago after scientists reported that other ground squirrels had different alarm calls to warn each other of flying predators such as hawks and eagles, versus predators on the ground, such as coyotes or badgers.
Prairie dogs, he said, were ideal animals to study because they are social animals that live in small co-operative groups within a larger colony, or "town" and they never leave their colony or territory, where they have built an elaborate underground complex of tunnels and burrows.
In order to figure out what the prairie dogs were saying, Slobodchikoff and his colleagues trapped them and painted them with fur dye to identify each one. Then they recorded the animals' calls in the presence of different predators.
16 replies
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I do think they have selective hearing though - if it's something they are interested in they seem to very much understand 
"...and they are violating our rights and iinvading our privacy by monitoring our conversations, emails, texts and nose wiggles." Prairie D.
...and some interesting conclusions.
...and some interesting remaining questions like: Would one species of prairie dogs understand the language of another species of prairie dogs?
And some broader conjectures in the accompanying interview:
So in humans, for example, we have all of these specialized structures for language: we have vocal cords, we have a larynx, we have specialized structures in our brain, our lungs are adapted for manipulating air in certain ways. And when you look at other animals, they have similar kinds of structures that are adapted for producing these signals. And once we look at that, language makes more sense from a neurobiological and anatomical evolutionary standpoint. Once we start looking at the continuity of these systems, we can see the evolutionary continuity. And we can see that we're not alone there.
Do I personally buy into this science? My signature line might provide a hint.
Thanks for the post, recursion.
