Has anyone ever told you, you could stand to lose some weight? Or maybe people have told you you’re as thin as a rail. Either way, it might not just be other people judging you on your looks. Prairie dogs have a complex language, and they are not only talking about people, but also calling them fat, skinny, tall, or short.
Prairie dogs are very social animals and live in underground towns. These towns are usually about one square kilometer in size, but the largest recorded prairie dog town was 65,000 square kilometers and had 400 million members. That’s about 50 times the number of people in New York City.
Con Slobodchikoff is a professor at Northern Arizona University and an expert in animal behavior. He has studied prairie dog communication for over 30 years. Prairie dogs make a squeaking noise that sounds like this. They make these squeaking noises to give each other a heads up that danger is on the way. Prairie dogs have many natural enemies, including humans, dogs, coyotes, and hawks. Slobodchikoff learned that the prairie dog has a different squeak for each of these animals and can describe their size, shape, color and speed. He learned this by secretly recording the squeaks each time one of these predators passed through the prairie dog town.
Slobodchikoff learned that the prairie dog language goes deeper than just simple nouns. He analyzed the recordings and realized that the prairie dogs were making different squeaks for different people. He came up with an experiment where four people walked through the prairie dog town four times. Each time they would change the color of their shirt from blue to yellow to grey to green. Slobodchikoff again recorded the squeaks and found that the prairie dogs have different words for the different colors. They were not just saying, “There is a human coming.” They were saying “there is a green-colored human” or “a yellow-colored human coming.” Slobodchikoff then tested whether there were different squeaks for other adjectives and found that they also use words for tall, short, fat and skinny when talking about humans.
Slobodchikoff is working on creating a computer program that will allow him to not only translate prairie dog speech, but also to talk to them. He believes that one day in the future, we will have machines the size of our cell phone that will allow us to talk to our dogs and cats. He hopes that “down the road, we will be forming partnerships with animals, rather than exploiting animals.”
References:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/prairie-dog/
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/132650631/new-language-discovered-prairiedogese
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/animal-behaviorist-well-soon-devices-181948866.html
Has anyone ever told you, you could stand to lose some weight? Or maybe people have told you you’re as thin as a rail . It might not just be other people judging you on your looks. Prairie dogs have a complicated language. They are not only talking about people, but also calling them fat, skinny, tall, or short.
Prairie dogs are very social animals and live in underground towns. These towns are usually about one square kilometer in size. But, the largest recorded prairie dog town was 65,000 square kilometers. It had 400 million members. That’s about 50 times the number of people in New York City.
Con Slobodchikoff has studied prairie dog communication for over 30 years. Prairie dogs make a squeaking noise that sounds like this. They make these squeaking noises to give each other a heads up that danger is on the way. Prairie dogs have many natural enemies, including people, dogs, coyotes, and hawks. Slobodchikoff learned that the prairie dog has a different squeak for different animals. They can describe their size, shape, color and speed. He learned this by secretly recording the squeaks each time one of these dangerous animals passed through the prairie dog town.
Slobodchikoff learned that the prairie dog language goes deeper than just simple nouns. He listened to the sounds carefully. He realized that the prairie dogs were making different squeaks for different people. He came up with an experiment where four people walked through the prairie dog town four times. Each time they would change the color of their shirt from blue to yellow to grey to green. He again recorded the squeaks. He found that the prairie dogs have different words for the different colors. They were not just saying, “There is a person coming.” They were saying “there is a green-colored person” or “a yellow-colored person coming.” Slobodchikoff then looked at whether there were different squeaks for other adjectives. He found they also use words for tall, short, fat and skinny when talking about people. Slobodchikoff is working on a computer program that will allow him to translate prairie dog speech. He also thinks it will allow him to talk to them. He believes that one day in the future, we will have machines that will allow us to talk to our dogs and cats. He hopes that down the road, we will become partners with animals.
References:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/prairie-dog/
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/132650631/new-language-discovered-prairiedogese
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/animal-behaviorist-well-soon-devices-181948866.html
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