Concept

Animal communication

Overview

Animal communication is the transfer of information from one or a group of animals (sender or senders) to one or more other animals (receiver or receivers) that affects the current or future behavior of the receivers. Information may be sent intentionally, as in a courtship display, or unintentionally, as in the transfer of scent from the predator to prey with kairomones. Information may be transferred to an "audience" of several receivers. Animal communication is a rapidly growing area of study in disciplines including animal behavior, sociology, neurology, and animal cognition.

When the information from the sender changes the behavior of a receiver, the information is referred to as a "signal". Signalling theory predicts that for a signal to be maintained in the population, both the sender and receiver should usually receive some benefit from the interaction. Signal production by senders and the perception and subsequent response of receivers are thought to coevolve. Signals often involve multiple mechanisms, e.g., both visual and auditory, and for a signal to be understood, the coordinated behavior of both sender and receiver requires careful study.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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The essence of language lies, not in the use of this or that special means of communication, but in the employment of fixed associations (however these may have originated) in order that something now sensible--a spoken word, a picture, a gesture, or what not--may call up the "idea" of something else. Whenever this is done, what is now sensible may be called a "sign" or "symbol," and that of which it is intended to…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
States what Animal communication is.
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This faculty has justly been considered as one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower animals. But man, as a highly competent judge, Archbishop Whately remarks, “is not the only animal that can make use of language to express what is passing in his mind, and can understand, more or less, what is so expressed by another.” (47. Quoted in ‘Anthropological Review,’ 1864, p. 158.) In Paraguay the Cebus…
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
States what Animal communication is.
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1. The nature of animals and their mode of reproduction has now been described. Their actions and mode of life also differ according to their disposition and their food. For almost all animals present traces of their moral dispositions, though these distinctions are most remarkable in man.
Aristotle, Aristotle's History of Animals In Ten Books
Close in meaning to Animal communication; the term itself is not named.
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Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Anatomy

Place in the tradition

Part of Philosophy of language.

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