Thursday, April 7, 2011

Wondermark comic about animal language

Here is a link to the comic


I love Wondermark. There are a number of highly amusing science comics by Malki that rank among the best comics I've ever LOL'ed at. This is no exception. Here, encapsulated in a simple webcomic, is all that I have wondered about human and animal 'language.' We consider ourselves sophisticated users of language because we have things like arbitrary signs (like beeping for instance), ability to talk about displaced or non-existent objects, and infinite flexibility of expression. However, these very things that we consider to make our communication of a higher order than the rest of the world, also makes our communication more obfuscated. A wolf's growl communicates in perfect clarity and simplicity across multiple species. No one needs to learn what it means, and no one needs any more information than it provides.