Prime Time Replay:
Dr. Diana Reiss
on Animal Communication
MsgId: *brainstorms(7)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:01:02 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
Good evening and welcome to Brainstorms. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Harary. Our guest tonight is communications expert Diana Reiss. Diana Reiss holds a Ph.D. in Speech and Communications Science from Temple University and is an internationally recognized researcher in cognition, vocal learning and communication in humans and other species. Her academic and research interests center on the nature of animal minds.Is there evidence that other species use symbolic forms of communication, or can they be taught to communicate using symbols? How CAN we know and how do scientists investigate this question? This is a new and highly controversial research area demanding interdisciplinary approaches.
Brainstorms is proud to welcome Dr. Reiss to discuss these questions as our special guest this evening. Hello Diana!
MsgId: *brainstorms(9)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:01:53 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
Hello, Keith! Hello, everyone!
MsgId: *brainstorms(13)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:06:46 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
Perhaps we should begin with a little of your background. You have been doing research in animal communication since the early 80's, and specialize in dolphin communication.
MsgId: *brainstorms(15)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:09:41 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
Yes, I developed a laboratory in 1983 at Marine World Africa USA in Vallejo, California, where I investigated dolphin communication and dolphins' cognitive abilities.
MsgId: *brainstorms(16)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:10:32 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
What can you tell us, Diana, about language in other species? Can animals use symbolic language?
MsgId: *brainstorms(17)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:12:13 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
It's an interesting question. Of course, the answer depends on how we define language. Certainly, other species have their own forms of communication, but whether we want to call other forms of communication "language" is a central issueOne thing we can do is describe the features of our human languages and then compare that with features we find in other animal communication systems. This is one way scientists try to evaluate or compare other forms of communication in other species.
MsgId: *brainstorms(19)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:14:19 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
Is there evidence that animals are intelligent, that is conscious, and actively using language to communicate? How do scientists approach such a question?
MsgId: *brainstorms(20)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:15:41 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
There are a bunch of questions in that one question! The first part of that question is there evidence that animals are intelligent, and the only way I can answer that is by saying, "What is our measure of intelligence?" How do we define intelligenceI actually like Ross Ashby's definition of intelligence (Ashby was a cybernetician), which was the power of appropriate selection in man, animal, or machine. I think this works because if we consider intelligence in another species, we have to think of the morphology of a species, the environment in which they live, and the social organizations in which they live. So for example, I studied the dolphins. The dolphin is a non-handed species, highly social, with large brains, a totally acquatic mammal. We're not going to see a form of intelligence manifesting in the ways ours will. They're not going to be typing or building houses. With dolophins, they're still extremely manipulative. They can manipulate objects in their environment without use of hands, clearly, and they can also manipulate others that they interact with.
The second part of your question asks about symbolic communication. There's evidence that certain species have aspects of communication that are symbolic. One of the earliest examples was discovered by Karl von Frisch in studying honeybee communication, and he found that honeybees use what he called the waggle-dance to transmit information to other bees about the location of food. They actually used two different kinds of dances, but the waggle dance seems to be a symbolic form which conveys information based on the trajectory of their dance relative to the sun. The dance itself had symbolic aspects.
MsgId: *brainstorms(25)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:24:13 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
That brings up a crucial question, Diana. Is such communication merely instinctive or does it imply conscious thought?
MsgId: *brainstorms(26)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:26:37 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
In the case of the honeybees, which is one example, it may indeed be genetically programmed. However, there seems to also be a learned aspect. For example, more recent research has shown that honeybees can actually learn to anticipate the location of food in experiments where the researchers systematically moved the food further and further from the hive. So for example, if the researcher moved the food 50 meters and then another 50 meters, the bees might be waiting before the food was even moved the next 50 meters. Which is really incredible, since bees don't have very many neurons in their brain at all.
MsgId: *brainstorms(28)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:28:22 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
It certainly is! But hasn't there always been a traditional historical distinction between animal and human minds?
MsgId: *brainstorms(31)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:31:54 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
Actually, if we go back to the time of Aristotle in the fourth century BC, he described what he called a ladder of nature which made distinctions between human, animal, and plant souls, which is very similar to the discussions we have now about mind. Rene Descartes in the 17th century made the distinction between humans and all other species, saying that humans had physical bodies that were endowed with a thinking substance, or a rational mind, but all other animals were merely automata, so that we had a "ghost in the machine" whereas other species were merely the machine.Then, of course, Charles Darwin broke away from that kind of thinking completely with his book ORIGIN OF SPECIES and his theory of evolutionary continuity, of physical evolution. Now, scientists called cognitive ethologists think in terms of continuity of mental experience, not just physical evolution. Pioneers in the field such as Dr. Donald Griffin, who has written several books on animal minds, question of animal awareness, have suggested that this is an important and new field for research.
MsgId: *brainstorms(34)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:35:48 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
Is there any scientific evidence that animals are actually self-aware?
MsgId: *brainstorms(35)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:40:37 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
Yes. Self-awareness, like the terms intelligence or language, has to be defined. But if we define self-awareness as the knowledge of one's self in relationship to one's environment, certainly other species show different levels of self-awareness. One specific example has been a test of self-awareness using a mirror with primate species such as chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. Chimpanzees are exposed to mirrors and at first, react as though they're seeing other chimpanzees. But over time, they learn something about that reflection they see. They learn about the contingencies of their own behavior and what's happening in the mirror. And their behavior changes in front of the mirror.
MsgId: *brainstorms(36)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:41:44 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
That's also true for human beings!
MsgId: *brainstorms(37)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:42:59 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
They actually start to examine parts of their bodies that they couldn't see without the mirror, such as looking at the inside of their mouths, portions of their backs. They examine themselves in the mirror, and it's striking to see these animals doing it. We've also run a test of self-recognition with bottlenose dolphins at my laboratory, and we have suggestive--but not conclusive--evidence of self-recognition in a mirror. But clearly self-recognition in a mirror is just one avenue to study self-awareness in other species.It's particularly interesting that there seems to be a real split. If you put monkeys in front of a mirror, the same monkey being exposed to a mirror for years will still not show signs of self-recognition. However, this doesn't mean that they're not self-aware in other ways.
MsgId: *brainstorms(38)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:44:30 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
Well here's an interesting thought: We have heard much about the high intelligence level of dolphins, but we have also heard that they tend to get caught in tuna nets. Why aren't they learning from past mistakes?
MsgId: *brainstorms(41)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:47:48 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
That's a very interesting problem. I don't have an absolute answer to why they don't learn. One thing we do know about dolphins is that they tend to avoid obstacles, and it's not surprising that they wouldn't jump over the nets in the water. From at least my observations in captivity, in situations of danger or when they're frightened, they tend to stick together. Also, in a situation where purse seine nets are used by fishermen, there's a great deal of noise and commotion in a dolphin's environment. The boats are circling dolphin schools as the nets are being dropped. And for these highly acoustic animals, it's probably a very confusing situation.We really don't know enough to say absolutely why they don't learn to avoid the boats. The boats are coming so fast that it may be very difficult for them to escape. But this still doesn't mean that they haven't learned anything about dangerous situations. It may just be hard for them to escape a situation like that.
MsgId: *brainstorms(40)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:47:31 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
It really sounds as though one of the problems in studying animal minds, and exploring the possibility of animal consciousness is that WE may have limitations in our ability to understand what is happening for them, within their frame of reference. Have there been any notable moments within your own research experience of apparently breaking through that boundary -- if only briefly?
MsgId: *brainstorms(43)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:52:10 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
Some scientists attempt to study how animals communicate in their own right, using their own forms of communication. And this is very difficult because we're outside of their social system. It's very difficult to decode the system of another animal. However, there have been some breakthroughs. In the case of vervet monkeys, scientists have discovered that they use what they call "semantic alarm calls." That is, vervet monkeys have specific calls for different predators in their environment, such as leopards, snakes, and eagles. These are specific calls, different calls structurally, that seem to stand for different predators, and that's why they're termed "semantic calls." And there are some examples of this--scientists decoding animal signals--but strong cases of this are slow in coming. That doesn't mean other animals don't have signals like this, but we need more research studying different animal species. In our laboratory at Marine World, Dr. Brenda McCowan and I are studying how dolphins communicate using whistles and other forms of communication, and we've found that certain calls are used for some specific activities such as disciplinary behavior with young dolphins, but again, our decoding process is very slow. There's a great deal of variety in the kinds of whistles they use in different contexts.
MsgId: *brainstorms(44)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:53:37 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
I am going to embarrass you here, but respectfully. I happen to know that you were instrumental in helping Humphrey the Whale escape from the San Francisco Bay, where he was trapped. And you also put yourself on the line to keep him from getting hurt. Can you tell our visitors something about that experience?
MsgId: *brainstorms(46)
Date: Fri Sep 27 22:59:30 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
I was involved in this whale rescue project in 1985 where a 45-foot humpback whale strayed into San Francisco Bay and continued to wander north into the small estuaries. Basically, we did some sound playback works using humpback whale sounds, and it was actually the first successful playback experiment where a dolphin or whale species responded. In this case, Humphrey followed our boat 80 miles back out towards the ocean. At one point in the rescue attempt when things were going well and he was following the boat, National Marine Fisheries agents who we worked with wanted to radio-tag the whale. But the tag was a fairly primitive tag that had barbs that would go into the whale's body, and I felt strongly that something this negative would have adverse effects on him following the boat, for obvious reasons.So I objected to the radio tagging, saying I would stop the playback if they wanted to continue, and that attempt was aborted and we were able to continue with the rescue, and it was a success.
MsgId: *brainstorms(48)
Date: Fri Sep 27 23:01:58 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
We are getting near the end of tonight's show. Is there anything you would like to add about your own hopes for the future of research in animal minds and communication?
MsgId: *brainstorms(49)
Date: Fri Sep 27 23:05:23 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
I think that there are a lot of studies that are being done now and have been done in the past 20 years trying to teach other species artificial codes, like teaching chimpanzees American Sign Language, teaching an African gray parrot functional human vocalization, working with underwater keyboards with dolphins as we've done at our laboratory, and the results of these studies strongly indicate that these species are able to learn association, many are symbolic in some cases, and that more resources should be put into this fascinating area of research. The more we learn about our connection with other species, in terms of physiology and mental processes, the more educated we'll be in terms of direction we'll take in management of our world and species living in it.
MsgId: *brainstorms(50)
Date: Fri Sep 27 23:07:19 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
I want to thank our wonderful guest, Dr. Diana Reiss, for joining us on Brainstorms. I hope you will join us again in the future to continue with this fascinating discussion.
MsgId: *brainstorms(51)
Date: Fri Sep 27 23:08:02 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
It would be my pleasure, Keith!
MsgId: *brainstorms(52)
Date: Fri Sep 27 23:09:29 EDT 1996
From: Keith_Harary At: 206.80.176.20
Thank you, Diana! I'm Keith Harary and goodnight for Brainstorms here on Omni Internet.
MsgId: *brainstorms(53)
Date: Fri Sep 27 23:10:22 EDT 1996
From: Diana_Reiss At: 206.80.183.239
Thanks to everyone! It was fun. Good night!
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