In the future, do you think we will ever be able to understand or talk to animals?

I think its possible, but it will be a long way away.

I mean, we learned to understand other language, so why not animals?

No.

Your posts are so motivational.

On a side note;

Don't we already, like house pets?

We can already.

Humans another animal, around long before human language, communicating in various languages but also with signals.

If we can signal another animal other than us, then yes we can communicate with them. If we as animals can communicate with each other than yes.


As for the future - possibly.

I believe that as most animals are instinct driven, it will be impossible to talk to them in their natural state. Animals with higher, almost sentient intelligence, will be easier to understand. We have already been able to talk to and understand a Gorilla named Koko, thanks to a device that allows her to communicate. I don't believe it is that far in the future for us to be able to talk to dolphins, and other apes. As for the animals of lesser intelligence, I believe that as technology progresses, if we cannot understand them, we will develop a way to increase their intelligence. It is a possibility.

Don't we already?

Usually when dogs wag their tails, I assume that its happy when when they bark and growl, I conclude that they're pissed about something

There's a college major out there just for understanding animal behavior, including communication. Why wouldn't we be able to understand animals? Do they communicate through psychic connections?

Dogs, in a way, have their own language, and humans aren't even close to fully understanding it. When a dog wags it's tail, it can mean that it is happy, but based on the positioning and also the speed at which it wags, it can also mean nervous, cautious, angry, protective, etc. The same for growling and barking. A dog may bark to warn, to alert, to get attention, to talk to other dogs, to call. Growling can be playful, or used as a warning. This is only barely scratching the surface of how dogs and other canines communicate, as it is all very complex. Broadening your view, different species of canines communicate in different ways. Foxes are different than wolves, which are different than dogs. This is only one family of intelligent animals, out of the thousands that exist, and we barely understand it all. And even if we learn how they communicate, we have to see the other side. When a dog follows a command, it isn't because they know that the word means what its definition is. They follow the command because we have taught them to associate it to a specific action. They don't understand what we say. For humans and other animals to mutually understand each other, we would have to fully understand them and they would have to fully understand us. Unfortunately, that is impossible at this time.

^ i think it's called "animal science"

Let me give you an example. There are several wolf packs that live in the Yellowstone area. They are all healthy and are studied very closely to help better human understanding of animal behavior and communication. It is not as easy as that though. It isn't just watch and understand. Most of what we do understand, we still don't know for sure. It is mostly guesses. And in a way, yes, animals do communicate through psychic links. Scent is something that is very foreign to humans, as we do not rely heavily on the sense. Many animals communicate through scent. While we know this, it is impossible for us to know exactly what a certain scent actually means. There has also been proof that certain scents mean different things in different situations. Now back to the wolves. A certain wolf of one of the numerous packs in Yellowstone, stumbles upon a dead moose that was killed by a rival wolf pack on the edge of their territory. The moose still had quite a bit of meat left on it. The wolf then rolls in the carcass, covering itself in the moose's scent, and then travels back to its pack. The pack all gather around and smell the returned wolf. Why did the wolf roll around in the carcass? Was it to tell the pack that there was food? Was it to tell them that a rival pack was close by? Maybe it was to tell them that there might be more moose near by. It is impossible to tell, because we can't read minds.

^It's not impossible to tell. We're smart creatures, we can infer, deduce, and all of those other scientific words that help us understand the world. We can also set up experiments and remove other factors.

As for the OP, my dog communicates perfectly well. He smacks the door when he needs to pee and whines in front of the pantry when he wants some food. When he's pleased he'll wag his tail. When he's distressed he'll pull back his ears and drop his tail. He has all of the basics covered, and I don't think he needs to have complex thoughts like us humans. If you're expecting words to show up on a dog collar translating their every thought, I don't believe it will ever be possible. Implanting human language into an animal's needs will either a) lose things in translation or b) fail to understand exactly what it is the animal is trying to communicate.

Note: It's 3AM and this was a lazy post. While you rip this post apart in any way, consider this and I'll respond in the morning. I feel braindead.

I agree, somewhat. It may not be impossible, but extremely hard. Nature isn't a stable scientific environment, nor is it ideal for experiments. Things change in nature, much of which we don't even know changed in the first place. Small things can have large consequences. The wolf might have been telling them that there was an intruding pack, and then the two packs confront each other a week later. But was that scent from the moose what caused it? A lot happens in a week. Also, all of those fancy scientific words such as deduction and inference are still guesses. they may be educated, but a guess is still a guess. And you can deduce everything you need to... over time. There are a lot of intelligent animals with very complex communication methods for us to deduce it all. In that time, we could probably invent a computer that would just do it for us. As for your dogs communication, it isn't what I consider real communication. Real communication is your dog telling you, in doggy language, that he has to go pee. Over time he has realized that knocking on the door will cause you to let him out. When you train a dog to sit, it doesn't sit because it knows what the word sit means, but because it associates the word sit with the action. You could just as easily teach a dog to sit with the word jump. It is just like training a dog, but the dog is training you. Your dog has taught you to associate a knock on the door as potty time. While this is effective for basic actions, it is in no way true communication (as I see it of course).

You were right about things getting lost in translation, though. We could never interpret a dog as thinking "tree" because the dog has no word for tree. Nor can it think "tall thing with leaves" because it neither knows what tall means, or what leaves are. Animals such as that are almost purely instinct and emotion when it comes to thoughts. Even if they are intelligent, such as dolphins, how could we ever understand them? They don't think the same way we do. A dog might wag it's tail when it is happy, but it doesn't know what "happy" is. What is it thinking when it is happy, or when it is hungry? It can't think that it wants food, because it doesn't know what "food" is. Because of this, it may seem impossible to ever understand animals. But aren't babies the same way? They are born not knowing what "crawl" means, or what "milk" is, but they learn. Couldn't we teach animals words? We certainly succeeded with Koko, the gorilla. Using a device, she can talk. Unfortunately, the device requires opposable thumbs. How would you even know if a dog understood human words? They can't voice them, and we can't read their mind. It is so exponentially complex, having a mutual understanding with animals.

Oh good lord. The reason we can't communicate to animals is because they're literally too stupid to use or comprehend language. I have no idea why zoophiles maintain this ridiculous notion that animals are just people in furry bodies.

Oh, and

We DO understand a lot of animals. That fish/worm/bird over there thinks "Food, Sex, Sleep, Danger." That's about it.

Whether some animals are smart enough to have other thoughts is up for debate. I suppose dogs have a fifth thought of "Play with me"

I don't believe that animals are humans in different bodies, and I understand that they have a lower cognitive function than us. But to say that they are TOO stupid for us to understand, or for them to ever understand us, isn't true. While this may represent the majority of animals, many species have shown, through scientific testing, signs of sentience. Not on the level of humans of course, but still, an intelligence above pure instinct. Many dogs have shown spacial reasoning, dolphins have shown self recognition, and is everyone forgetting about Koko?



Certain scientists who have studied the vocalizations of dolphins for years are finally getting a grasp on how complex it is. It is so complex, that many are wondering if it is its own language, complete and whole. If this is true, then the intelligence that dolphins have is way beyond what we imagined. Dolphins do use tools, to help with eating, kind of like sea otters. If dolphins have an actual language, which is a very complex undertaking, then it comes to thought that the only thing that prevents them from becoming technologically advanced is their lack of opposable thumbs. This is all a very radical theory though.

As said above, we understand them some already, but we will defietly be able to decyphre their speech in the near future.

Yeahhhh pretty much. While I believe there is a lot to learn about animals, we're never gonna be able to communicate with them at as equals.

We share 98% of our DNA with our closest genetic relative, the Chimpanzee. Look how stupid they are compared to us. Then look at the rest of the Animal Kingdom. I don't doubt that they possess a form of consciousness and awareness just as humans do, I don't doubt that any life form does, but the fact is that we're simply more intelligent, to an unfathomable degree. It's in our genes.

hahaha nah, I don't think it'll reach the point where we can communicate as clearly as we do with other humans. Communication can improve, and it's already pretty good in some cases as stated above, but we won't reach a point where we can talk as equals or anything.

Well as people have linked, Koko the Gorilla has been taught sign language, and she can communicate very well, showing signs of cognition at the level of a human child. I don't think it will ever be possible to translate anything but the most simple levels of communication into human language, because animals communicate using instinct and desires. I can't remember where I read it, but there is already a machine available that can be calibrated to a certain dogs barking and translate whether its bark is communicating Danger, food, going outside to the toilet, etc. Anything more complicated than that just doesn't show up in a dog's brain.

Also, ravens and parrots can be taught to communicate with human speech, and Ravens/Grey Parrots have been shown to show semantic understanding of the words (that is the meaning of the words, not just how to mimic the sound), and even respond to new questions that they have never heard. I think the only progress we might be able to make is learning how to better communicate to animals, and how to better analyse how they communicate to learn what they are conveying (E.g analysing scent and body language)