Animal Communication Quotes & Sayings

I would expect a significant development and elaboration of language in only a few generations if all the chimps unable to communicate were to die or fail to reproduce. Basic English corresponds to about 1,000 words. Chimpanzees are already accomplished in vocabularies exceeding 10 percent of that number. — Carl Sagan

The science of control and communication in the animal and the machine — Norbert Wiener

If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant. — Peter Singer

Today's Darwinists will tell you that the task of humanity is to take charge of evolution. But 'humanity' is only a name for a ragtag animal with no capacity to take charge of anything. By destabilizing the climate, it is making the planet less hospitable to human life. By developing new technologies of mass communication and warfare, it has set in motion processes of evolution that may end up displacing it. — John N. Gray

At that moment there was no need of any scientific knowledge to understand his communication of reassurance. The soft pressure of his fingers spoke to me not through my intellect but through a more primitive emotional channel: the barrier of untold centuries which has grown up during the separate evolution of man and chimpanzee was, for those few seconds, broken down.

It was a reward far beyond my greatest hopes. — Jane Goodall

In addition to Ameslan, chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates are being taught a variety of other gestural languages. And it is just this transition from tongue to hand that has permitted humans to regain the ability-lost, according to Josephus, since Eden-to communicate with the animals. — Carl Sagan

There needs to be clearer communication for the public avout how valuable it [animal testing] is — Robert Winston

A great deal has been learned about cell communication. The universal nature of cellular structure and organization in bacteria, plant and animal cells has been discovered. — Gunter Blobel

Would the Gardners and the workers at the Yerkes Primate Center be remembered dimly as legendary folk heroes or gods of another species? Would there be myths, like those of Prometheus, Thoth, or Cannes, about divine beings who had given the gift of language to the apes? — Carl Sagan

Thus we do not yet have experience with the
adult language abilities of monkeys and apes. One of the most intriguing questions is whether a verbally accomplished chimpanzee mother will be able to communicate language to her offspring. It seems very likely that this should be possible and that a community of chimps initially competent in gestural
language could pass down the language to subsequent generations. — Carl Sagan

Derangement is the only possible explanation for owning a cat, an animal whose preferred mode of communication is to sink its claws three-quarters of an inch into your flesh. — Dave Barry

The nineteenth century was the Age of Romanticism; for the first time in history, man stopped thinking of himself as an animal or a slave, and saw himself as a potential god. All of the cries of revolt against 'God' - De Sade, Byron's "Manfred", Schiller's "Robbers", Goethe's "Faust", Hoffmann's mad geniuses - are expressions of this new spirit. Is this why the 'spirits' decided to make a planned and consistent effort at 'communication'? It was the right moment. Man was beginning to understand himself. — Colin Wilson

Chloe, wake up. I really, really, really need to pee."
I moan and sink deeper into Jorge's arms, pulling my hand back.
"Chloe, wake up. I'm dying here. I have to pee."
Ugh, why won't that voice go away? I crack my eyes open and see Ringo by the bed prancing around doing the doggy version of a potty dance.
Ringo starts prancing toward the bedroom door. "Thank goodness. I've got to go. — Katya Armock

Animal language is a contagious expression of mood effecting communication between social partners. — Robert Ardrey

Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction. — O. Henry

The fact of the matter is that, since we are determined always to keep our feelings to ourselves, we have never given any thought to the manner in which we should express them. And suddenly there is within us a strange and obscene animal making itself heard, whose tones may inspire as much alarm in the person who receives the involuntary, elliptical and almost irresistible communication of one's defect or vice as would the sudden avowal indirectly and outlandishly proffered by a criminal who can no longer refrain from confessing to a murder of which one had never imagined him to be guilty. — Marcel Proust

Quite apart from anything else, my experience is trying to change things for the better makes you feel better, healthier. Humans are communicative animals: when you do good in a community, the benefits eventually get back to you. — Anita Roddick

I stood with my hands on the horses' necks, feeling the electricity of their thinking, the blood moving throughout their veins, and the history held neatly within the fabric of every organ of their equine anatomy, as if the body were a storage unit of memory. As I absorbed every nuance of the four-legged creatures, I touched my own stomach, lower back, liver, and spleen to see what the energies felt like. I compared one horse to another, then to myself, fascinated by the way each was so unique yet so the same. — Bethanne Elion

If there really is a definable 6th sense, it would be the natural connection and the ability of communication between man and animal — Justin Southwick

To me, animal communication seemed an insane idea, years ago; but my experience altered my life and my beliefs. — Bernie Siegel

When I hear somebody talk about a horse or cow being stupid; I figure it's a sure sign that the animal has somehow outfoxed them — Tom Dorrance

Who knows what the long-term effects of saving rescue dogs are and the healing lessons and love they bring to Earth? Each one of us has the capacity to influence hundreds - even thousands of people or animals through the way we live our lives. — Jadi Kindred

If ... deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the deception being practiced.' Thus, 'the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution. — Robert Trivers

You wouldn't walk with your underpants stuck in your bottom, you'd adjust them. So don't treat life like ill-fitting wondering underpants, adjust it to be comfortable again — E.E.D. Horton

For example, if (as Dawkins argues) deceit is fundamental in animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the deception being practiced. — Richard Dawkins

People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices — Gary L. Francione

Because of his capacity for abstract communications and language and his ability to enter in imagination into the lives of others, man is able to build organizations of a size and complexity far beyond those of the lower animals. — Kenneth E. Boulding

No matter what you do if it isn't genuine it's not worth doing, if it isn't meant with good heart it's not worth saying, and if it's a darkness around you perhaps it's not worth remembering. — E.E.D. Horton

During the first and primitive stages of the history of our species there was a general centrifugal movement of peoples into distance, to all sides, with the various populations becoming increasingly separated, each developing its own applications and associated interpretations of the shared universal motifs; whereas, since we are all now being brought together again in this mighty present period of world transport and communication, those differences are fading. The old differences separating one system from another now are becoming less and less important, less and less easy to define. And what, on the contrary, is becoming more and more important is that we should learn to see through all the differences to the common themes that have been there all the while, that came into being with the first emergence of ancestral man from the animal levels of existence, and are with us still. — Joseph Campbell

Human spoken language seems to be
adventitious. The exploitation of organ systems with other functions for communication in humans is also indicative of the comparatively recent evolution of our linguistic abilities. — Carl Sagan

He was becoming something the world had never seen before - a dream animal - living at least partially within a secret universe of his own creation and sharing that secret universe in his head with other, similar heads. Symbolic communication had begun. Man had escaped out of the eternal present of the animal world into a knowledge of past and future. The unseen gods, the powers behind the world of phenomenal appearance, began to stalk through his dreams. — Loren Eiseley

Our difficulties in understanding or effectuating
communication with other animals may arise from our reluctance to grasp unfamiliar ways of dealing with the world. — Carl Sagan