whether animal talk to one another? If so, what is their language?

Question

Animals have got the rare quality to express among themselves in a sign language. For instance, if the animal does not want food just refuse to take and offer it to another. The actions done by the animals surely indicate the intention.

Generally, animals cannot speak. But many animals can speak in their own fashion. If a dog bark to warn of danger or to express joy or anger or feeling loneliness. Calf tell its mother that it is hungry. Monkeys make different voices to give different meanings.Insects can talk in their own way. Due to feelers these insects touch each other and make few things understood.

Answer 1

Animals relate to each other, mostly with body language..

Answer 2

Its questionable whether animals can "speak" to each other in a literal sense. They can communicate through a number of devices, tail movements, postures, ears, etc. It is thought that dogs and wolves do understand some barking, but it is much more the body language. cats to can communicate through body language and even some speech, purring is a nice example of a cat expressing contentment and happiness. The rest is a matter of opinion.

Answer 3

but animals do speak in their own 'language'! A dog barks, birds chirp/squawk whatever, mouse squeak .... and if you listen closely enough they are different pitches of barks indicating different things.

I don't think sign/body language is exclusive only to animals. We human beings communicate largely with body language too!

Answer 4

Well,you got most of it right. Mostly though, animals use body language like a growl or lowered tail. Since they do not have a long range of sounds with their vocal cords they use looks.

Answer 5

animal does not talk but they communicate to each other..communication was done via body language and also different type of sounds/voices to represent their emotions and sending message to others whether from the same type of species or other species..different species of animals will have different way of sending their messages..

Answer 6

animals have thier instinctive behavior to express their different sense what they refuse or what they offer with signing language.

Answer 7

Animal communication is any behaviour on the part of one animal that has an effect on the current or future behaviour of another animal. The study of animal communication, sometimes called zoosemiotics (distinguishable from anthroposemiotics, the study of human communication) has played an important part in the development of ethology, sociobiology, and the study of animal cognition.

Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of the animal world in general, is a rapidly growing field, and even in the 21st century so far, many prior understandings related to diverse fields such as personal symbolic name use, animal emotions, animal culture and learning, and even sexual conduct, long thought to be well understood, have been revolutionized
Forms of communication
Most of the following forms of communication can also be used for interspecific communication.

The best known forms of communication involve the display of distinctive body parts, or distinctive bodily movements; often these occur in combination, so a distinctive movement acts to reveal or emphasise a distinctive body part. An example that was important in the history of ethology was the parent Herring Gull's presentation of its bill to a chick in the nest. Like many gulls, the Herring Gull has a brightly coloured bill, yellow with a red spot on the lower mandible near the tip. When it returns to the nest with food, the parent stands over its chick and taps the bill on the ground in front of it; this elicits a begging response from a hungry chick (pecking at the red spot), which stimulates the parent to regurgitate food in front of it. The complete signal therefore involves a distinctive morphological feature (body part), the red-spotted bill, and a distinctive movement (tapping towards the ground) which makes the red spot highly visible to the chick. Investigations by Niko Tinbergen and his colleagues showed that the red colour of the bill, and its high contrast, are crucial for eliciting the appropriate response from the chick (It is unresolved whether this actually is an inborn behavior in all its complexity, or simply a combination of generalized curiosity on part of the chick, and generalized parental/feeding instincts acting together to produce a simple learning process via reward. Gull chicks peck at everything that is brightly colored, mainly red, yellow, white or shining, high-contrast objects, but the parent's bill is the only such object that will constantly yield food as a reward when pecked at. Accidental swallowing of pieces of brightly colored plastic or glass is a common cause of mortality amongst gull chicks).

Another important forms of communication is bird song, usually performed mainly by males, though in some species the sexes sing in alternation (this is called duetting and serves mainly purposes of strengthening pair-bonding and repelling competitors). Bird song is just the best known case of vocal communication; other instances include the warning cries of many monkeys, the territorial calls of gibbons, and the mating calls of many species of frog.

Less obvious (except in a few cases) is olfactory communication. Many mammals, in particular, have glands that generate distinctive and long-lasting smells, and have corresponding behaviours that leave these smells in places where they have been. Often the scented substance is introduced into urine or feces. Sometimes it is distributed through sweat, though this does not leave a semi-permanent mark as scents deposited on the ground do. Some animals have glands on their bodies whose sole function appears to be to deposit scent marks: for example Mongolian gerbils have a scent gland on their stomachs, and a characteristic ventral rubbing action that deposits scent from it. Golden hamsters and cats have scent glands on their flanks, and deposit scent by rubbing their sides against objects; cats also have scent glands on their foreheads. Bees carry with them a pouch of material from the hive which they release as they reenter, the smell of which indicates if they are a part of the hive and grants their safe entry.
Functions of communication
While there are as many kinds of communication as there are kinds of social behaviour, a number of functions have been studied in particular detail. They include:

agonistic interaction: everything to do with contests and aggression between individuals. Many species have distinctive threat displays that are made during competition over food, mates or territory; much bird song functions in this way. Often there is a matched submission display, which the threatened individual will make if it is acknowledging the social dominance of the threatener; this has the effect of terminating the aggressive episode and allowing the dominant animal unrestricted access to the resource in dispute. Some species also have affiliative displays which are made to indicate that a dominant animal accepts the presence of another
courtship rituals: signals made by members of one sex to attract or maintain the attention of potential mate, or to cement a pair bond. These frequently involve the display of body parts, body postures (gazelles assume characteristic poses as a signal to initiate mating), or the emission of scents or calls, that are unique to the species, thus allowing the individuals to avoid mating with members of another species which would be infertile. Animals that form lasting pair bonds often have symmetrical displays that they make to each other: famous examples are the mutual presentation of weed by Great-Crested Grebes, studied by Julian Huxley, the triumph displays shown by many species of geese and penguins on their nest sites and the spectacular courtship displays by birds of paradise and manakins.
food-related signals: many animals make "food calls" that attract a mate, or offspring, or members of a social group generally to a food source. When parents are feeding offspring, the offspring often have begging responses (particularly when there are many offspring in a clutch or litter - this is well known in altricial songbirds, for example). Perhaps the most elaborate food-related signal is the dance language of honeybees studied by Karl von Frisch.
alarm calls: signals made in the presence of a threat from a predator, allowing all members of a social group (and often members of other species) to run for cover, become immobile, or gather into a group to reduce the risk of attack.
metacommunications: signals that modify the meaning of subsequent signals. The best known example is the play face in dogs, which signals that a subsequent aggressive signal is part of a play fight rather than a serious aggressive episode.
Interpretation of animal communication
It is important to note that whilst many gestures and actions have common, stereotypical meanings, researchers regularly seem to find that animal communication is often more complex and subtle than previously believed, and that the same gesture may have multiple distinct meanings depending on context and other behaviors. So generalizations such as "X means Y" are often, but not always accurate. For example, even a simple domestic dog's tail wag may be used in subtlely different ways to convey many meanings including:

Excitement
Anticipation
Playfulness
Contentment/enjoyment
Relaxation or anxiety
Questioning another animal or a human as to intentions
Tentative role assessment on meeting another animal
Reassurance ("I'm hoping to be friendly, are you?")
Brief acknowledgement ("I hear you", or "I'm aware and responsive if you want my attention")
Statement of interest ("I want that [food, toy, activity], if you're willing")
Uncertainty/apprehension
Submissive placation (if worried by a more dominant animal)
Combined with other body language, in a specific context, many gestures such as yawns, direction of vision, and so on all convey meaning. Thus statements that a particular action "means" something should always be interpreted to mean "often means" something. As with human beings, who may smile or hug or stand a particular way for multiple reasons, many animals reuse gestures too.

Animal language is the modeling of human language in animal systems. While the term is widely used, most researchers agree that animal languages are not as complex or expressive as that which they attempt to model - the human language.

Some researchers argue that there are significant differences separating human language from animal communication even at its most complex, and that the underlying principles are not related.

Others argue that an evolutionary continuum exists between the communication methods these animals use and human language.

For more on communication among non-human animals, see The Animal Communication Project.

The following properties of human language have been argued to separate it from animal communication:

'Arbitrariness:' There is no rational relationship between a sound or sign and its meaning (There is nothing "housy" about a house.)
'Cultural transmission:' Language is passed from one language user to the next, consciously or unconsciously.
'Discreteness:' Language is composed of discrete units that are used in combination to create meaning.
'Displacement:' Languages can be used to communicate ideas about things that are not in the immediate vicinity either spatially or temporally.
'Duality:' Language works on two levels at once, a surface level and a semantic (meaningful) level.
'Metalinguistics:' Ability to discuss language itself.
'Productivity:' A finite number of units can be used to create an infinite number of utterances.
Research with apes, like that of Francine Patterson with Koko, suggested that apes are capable of using language that meets some of these requirements. However, now the validity of said research is widely disputed and, for some, discredited.

In the wild chimpanzees have been seen "talking" to each other, when warning about approaching danger. For example, if one chimpanzee sees a snake, he makes a low, rumbling noise, signalling for all the other chimps to climb into nearby trees.

Arbitrariness has been noted in meerkat calls; bee dances show elements of spatial displacement; and cultural transmission has occurred with the offspring of many of the great apes who have been taught sign languages, the celebrated Bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha, being examples.

However, these single features alone do not qualify such instances of communication as being true language.

Non-Primates: Studied examples
The most studied examples of animal languages are:

Bee dance - used to communicate direction of food source in many species of bees
Bird songs - songbirds can be very articulate. African Grey Parrots are famous for their ability to mimic human language, and at least one specimen, Alex, can answer a number of simple questions about objects he is presented with.
Whale songs - Two groups of whales, the Humpback Whale and the subspecies of Blue Whale found in the Indian Ocean, are known to produce the repetitious sounds at varying frequencies known as whale song. Male Humpback Whales perform these vocalizations only during the mating season, and so it is surmised the purpose of songs is to aid sexual selection. Humpbacks also make sound called the feeding call. This is a long sound (5 to 10 s duration) of near constant frequency. Humpbacks generally feed cooperatively by gathering in groups, swimming underneath shoals of fish and all lunging up vertically through the fish and out of the water together. Prior to these lunges, whales make their feeding call. The exact purpose of the call is not known, but research suggests that fish do know what it means. When the sound was played back to them, a group of herring responded to the sound by moving away from the call, even though no whale was present.
Prairie dog language: Dr. Slobodchikoff studied prairie dog communication and made the following discoveries. His current findings are that prairie dogs have: a) different alarm calls for different species of predators; b) different escape behaviors for different species of predators; c) transmission of semantic information, in that playbacks of alarm calls in the absence of predators lead to escape behaviors that are appropriate to the kind of predator who elicited the alarm calls; d) alarm calls containing descriptive information about the general size, color, and speed of travel of the predator. Northern Arizona University Research.Comparison of the term with "animal communication"
It is worth distinguishing "animal language" from "animal communication", no matter how complex that latter may be. In general the term "animal language" is reserved for the modeling of human language in animal systems, although there is some comparative interchange in certain cases (e.g. Cheney & Seyfarth's vervet monkey call studies). Thus "animal language" typically does not include bee dancing, bird song, whale song, dolphin signature whistles, prairie dogs, nor the communicative systems found in most social mammals. Also the features of language as listed above are a dated formulation by Hockett in 1960, one of the first attempts ever to break down features of human language for the purpose of being able to apply Darwinian gradualism, and although an influence on early animal language efforts (see below), is today not considered the key architecture at the core of "animal language" research.

Also, Animal Language results are controversial for several reasons. ( For a related controversy, see also Clever Hans. ) In the 70's John Lilly was attempting to "break the code" to speak full-out with wild populations of dolphins so we could speak to them, and share our cultures, histories, and more. This effort failed. The very early chimpanzee work was with chimpanzee infants raised as if they were human, a test of the nature vs. nurture hypothesis. Of course, they had a different laryngeal structure, as well as no voluntary control of their breathing, so this didn't work well, leading subsequent researchers to move toward a gestural (sign language) modality, as well as "keyboard" devices laden with buttons adorned with symbols that the animals (known as lexigrams) could push to produce artificial language, or observe humans pushing to comprehend it. These later keyboard and gestural chimpanzee researchers are perhaps the best known in animal language, and their animals are also known on a first-name basis: Sarah, Lana, Kanzi, Koko, Sherman, Austin, Chantek. Perhaps the best known critic of "Animal Language" is Herbert Terrace.

Terrace's 1979 criticism using his own research with the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky was scathing and basically spelled the end of animal language research in that era, most of which emphasized the production of language by animals. In short, he accused researchers of over-interpreting their results, especially as it is rarely parsimonious to ascribe true intentional "language production" when other simpler explanations for the behaviors (gestural hand signs) could be put forth. Also, his animals failed to show generalization of the concept of reference between the modalities of comprehension and production; this generalization is one of many fundamental ones that are trivial for human language use. The simpler explanation according to Terrace was that the animals had learned a sophisticated series of context-based behavioral strategies to obtain either primary (food) or social reinforcement, behaviors that could be over-interpreted as language use.

In 1984 during this anti-Animal Language backlash, Louis Herman published an account of artificial language in the bottlenosed dolphin in the human journal Cognition, and the difference was he emphasized a method of studying language comprehension only, which enabled rigorous controls and statistical tests, largely due to the fact that he was limiting his researchers to evaluating the animals' physical behaviors (in response to sentences) with blinded observers, rather than attempting to interpret possible language utterances or productions. The dolphins' names here were: Akeakamai and Phoenix. Irene Pepperberg used the vocal modality for language production and comprehension in an African Grey Parrot named Alex in the verbal mode, and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh continues to study pygmy chimpanzees (Bonobo chimpanzees such as Kanzi and Panabanisha). R. Schusterman duplicated many of the dolphin results in his California Sea Lions ("Rocky"), and came from a more behaviorist tradition than Herman's cognitive approach. Schusterman's emphasis is on the importance on a learning structure known as "equivalence classes."

However overall there has not been any meaningful dialog between the linguistics and animal language spheres, despite its popularity in capturing the public's imagination in the popular press. Also the growing field of language evolution is another source of future interchange between these disciplines. Most primate researchers tend to show a bias toward a shared pre-linguistic ability between humans & chimpanzees, dating back to a common ancestor, while dolphin and parrot researchers stress the general cognitive principles underlying these abilities. More recent related controversies regarding animal abilities include the closely linked areas of Theory of mind, Imitation (e.g. Nehaniv & Dautenhahn, 2002), Animal Culture (e.g. Rendell & Whitehead, 2001), and Language Evolution (e.g. Christiansen & Kirby, 2003).