Saturday, March 12, 2011

Animal Linguistics Series

My linguist friend has invited me (ok maybe I volunteered) to give a guest lecture to her class. In this lecture, I will cover a number of examples of animal communication and compare and contrast these communication systems with those of humans.

Linguistics has always seemed very interesting to me. I might even classify myself as a word geek. I collect new words like shiny insects, pinning them down by using them often. I am very good at crosswords.

Communication in the animal and particular the insect world, however, is rarely possessed of such nuance as actual words. Nevertheless, animals say a whole lot with chemical, sound, and visual signals. Some animal communication systems are surprisingly complex.

To prepare for this lecture, I'm going to go through a few outstanding examples of animal communication over the next several days. Enjoy!

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