If this turns out to be basically true, then what about wild wolves? I think there is a strong case that the capacity for this sort of communication to have been bred into domestic dogs as a result of humans selecting for e.g. better overall intelligence and ability to understand human commands.
Another option is that wild wolf packs have the capacity for this sort of communication but don’t (unless we’ve simply not noticed it) and this seems much less likely to me, for the sole reason that being able to communicate in this way would give a very large advantage to wild wolves. It would be odd if they kept the cognitive machinery for this around (and using up resources for the rest of their bodies) without making use of it.
There is a final option that developing a language is like discovering a technology, and once a language exists it is much easier to teach it to others than it originally was to develop the language. This would be very interesting to investigate, perhaps languages are like a sort of software on the brain, which are able to convert various processes (association learning, pattern recognition, episodic memory) into something more structured which allows for easier reasoning. This is getting very Sapir-Whorf hypothesis-ey and as someone who is not a linguist or anthropologist I can’t really say if this is even reasonable or not.
As an aside the second option reminds me of the experiments to try and teach chimpanzees to use human sign language. (which were considered at the time to be a great success but were less than stellar) Chimpanzees in the wild have a very rudimentary form of sign language but have not developed it into something like a human language despite the potential advantages (either in social conflicts or in hunting/gathering food etc.). This to me suggests that chimpanzees probably don’t have the capacity for more complex sign languages than they already have.
It would be odd if they kept the cognitive machinery for this around (and using up resources for the rest of their bodies) without making use of it.
Humans who learn to drive cars have amazing cognitive machinery for it despite not being evolved for it. The human brain being able to edit the sense of time when driving cars seems pretty amazing. Similar things go for reading.
The ability of brains to learn is very general.
Given that the buttons work for autistic humans who are not capable of learning sign language learning to use them is likely less cognitively demanding then learning to use sign language.
I more meant “keeping around cognitive machinery which is capable of this” without making use of it. Given that wild wolves use (relatively) simple hunting strategies which do not seem to rely on much communication, there doesn’t seem to be much need to have a brain capable of communicating relatively abstract thoughts. That doesn’t seem to affect your core argument though
Good point about autistic humans who can’t learn sign language though, I hadn’t considered that. I guess my model of autism was more like:
“Autism affects the brain in lots of different ways which is able to knock out specific abilities (like speech) without knocking out other abilities (like the capability to have and communicate complex thoughts, which would not have evolved in an animal without speech)”
than drawing on some amount of general purpose computing behind each one. I haven’t studied autism enough to know if this is correct.
I would expect that moving fast running fast through a dense forest does take a lot of cognition to know where to go effectively. Terrain knowledge gets likely also used.
If this turns out to be basically true, then what about wild wolves? I think there is a strong case that the capacity for this sort of communication to have been bred into domestic dogs as a result of humans selecting for e.g. better overall intelligence and ability to understand human commands.
Another option is that wild wolf packs have the capacity for this sort of communication but don’t (unless we’ve simply not noticed it) and this seems much less likely to me, for the sole reason that being able to communicate in this way would give a very large advantage to wild wolves. It would be odd if they kept the cognitive machinery for this around (and using up resources for the rest of their bodies) without making use of it.
There is a final option that developing a language is like discovering a technology, and once a language exists it is much easier to teach it to others than it originally was to develop the language. This would be very interesting to investigate, perhaps languages are like a sort of software on the brain, which are able to convert various processes (association learning, pattern recognition, episodic memory) into something more structured which allows for easier reasoning. This is getting very Sapir-Whorf hypothesis-ey and as someone who is not a linguist or anthropologist I can’t really say if this is even reasonable or not.
As an aside the second option reminds me of the experiments to try and teach chimpanzees to use human sign language. (which were considered at the time to be a great success but were less than stellar) Chimpanzees in the wild have a very rudimentary form of sign language but have not developed it into something like a human language despite the potential advantages (either in social conflicts or in hunting/gathering food etc.). This to me suggests that chimpanzees probably don’t have the capacity for more complex sign languages than they already have.
Humans who learn to drive cars have amazing cognitive machinery for it despite not being evolved for it. The human brain being able to edit the sense of time when driving cars seems pretty amazing. Similar things go for reading.
The ability of brains to learn is very general.
Given that the buttons work for autistic humans who are not capable of learning sign language learning to use them is likely less cognitively demanding then learning to use sign language.
I more meant “keeping around cognitive machinery which is capable of this” without making use of it. Given that wild wolves use (relatively) simple hunting strategies which do not seem to rely on much communication, there doesn’t seem to be much need to have a brain capable of communicating relatively abstract thoughts. That doesn’t seem to affect your core argument though
Good point about autistic humans who can’t learn sign language though, I hadn’t considered that. I guess my model of autism was more like:
“Autism affects the brain in lots of different ways which is able to knock out specific abilities (like speech) without knocking out other abilities (like the capability to have and communicate complex thoughts, which would not have evolved in an animal without speech)”
than drawing on some amount of general purpose computing behind each one. I haven’t studied autism enough to know if this is correct.
I would expect that moving fast running fast through a dense forest does take a lot of cognition to know where to go effectively. Terrain knowledge gets likely also used.
If that were the case, don’t you think that animals that actually run faster than humans in dense forest would be more intelligent ?
Which animals are you thinking about?