Animals that can talk are social species, and most of the animals that have this special skill develop it while they're in captivity. Since they're separated from their own kind, they interact with humans and pick up on their vocal cues and then learn how to speak themselves.
There were parrots that learnt to use words in proper context and had meaningful dialogues with humans. Alex, a grey parrot, understood questions about color, shape, size, number etc. of objects and would provide a one-word answer to them. He is also documented to have asked an existential question.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, researchers Keith and Catherine Hayes tried to teach a chimpanzee named Viki to speak. After years of training, Viki was only able to produce four words: “mama,” “papa,” “cup” and “up.”
Why can't animals talk like us? Some have speculated that a structural distinction exists between other animals and humans that allows us to shape words, but recent research has shown that to be unsubstantiated. Animals certainly communicate, but they don't create words because the words have no meaning to them.
With dogs, it's like they maintain the mind of a toddler, which means they have more limitations. Because of this and the role they take on within human households, it is highly unlikely that they will evolve to speak in the same way humans do.
Stella proved she was a quick learner when she used her very first word the next month. Stella currently knows 29 words and is able to tell her parents when she wants to play, go outside, and drink water. She's even able to express when she's feeling affectionate with a "love you." So how does Stella communicate?
She was named Hanabi-Ko, Japanese for 'Fireworks Child', but she'd become a celebrity known as Koko. She captured our imagination when she broke the human-animal barrier by communicating with a version of sign language. As an adult, her vocabulary was 1,000-word strong, and she understood 2,000 English words.
Gorillas and humans go way back. All the way back to our common ancestor who lived 10 million years ago, in fact. Because gorillas and humans are so close on the primate family tree, it would make sense that they would be the first animals that humans could actually talk to.
Monkeys and apes lack the neural control over their vocal tract muscles to properly configure them for speech, Fitch concludes. "If a human brain were in control, they could talk," he says, though it remains a bit of a mystery why other animals can produce at least rudimentary speech.
Bottlenose Dolphins
For years, dolphins have been heralded as the smartest animals on Earth, second only to humans—though some would even contest that ranking. Aside from humans, dolphins have the greatest brain-to-body ratio among animal species, including primates.
Noc the beluga whale
In fact, the human-like calls were coming from a captive male beluga whale named Noc. A study was subsequently conducted that proved the rhythms recorded from Noc's wails were close in pattern and tonality to that of human speech.
Not only do humans have evolved brains that process and produce language and syntax, but we also can make a range of sounds and tones that we use to form hundreds of thousands of words. To make these sounds -- and talk -- humans use the same basic apparatus that chimps have: lungs, throat, voice box, tongue and lips.
Some animals, including parrots, songbirds, beluga whales, and dolphins, can mimic human speech. These animals are vocal learners and are adept at mimicking noises after hearing them. They may appear to be speaking, but they are excellent imitators.
Chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans have used sign language, physical tokens, keyboards and touch screens to communicate with humans in numerous research studies. The research showed that they understood multiple signals and produced them to communicate with humans.
It may soon become possible to use bioacoustics and artificial intelligence to communicate with animals, according to Dr. Karen Bakker, a professor at the University of British Columbia and a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Chimpanzees
We share 99 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, so it comes as no surprise that countless hours of research have been dedicated to understanding the intelligence and behavior of our sister species. This research has firmly established that chimps are one of the most intelligent species on earth.
All species alive today have evolved just as much as we have, but in different ways. Great apes are not less evolved than us, just differently so. As such, there's no definitive reason that they should move toward human levels of intelligence.
"The big picture is that we're perhaps 98 percent identical in our sequences to gorillas. So that means most of our genes are very similar, or even identical to, the gorilla version of the same gene," said Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist at Wellcome Trust.
August 20, 2022 by Sandra Hearth For many humans to beat a mountain gorilla, that would need your strength combined into one person which is even impossible. Mountain gorillas have been killed by humans using weapons but there's no single record of any human ever killing a mountain gorilla using bear hands.
While some zoo specimens are known to eat meat, wild gorillas eat only plants and fruit, along with the odd insect—as far as scientists know (see video of wild gorillas feasting on figs).
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Licking is a natural and instinctive behaviour to dogs. For them it's a way of grooming, bonding, and expressing themselves. Your dog may lick you to say they love you, to get your attention, to help soothe themselves if they're stressed, to show empathy or because you taste good to them!