I believe that animals do talk in their own way. That’s been my philosophy for as long as I can remember. Last night I watched Nova on my local PBS station that dealt with that very topic, “Can Dogs Talk?”
The study in question dealt with training a number of highly intelligent dog breeds to press a button on the floor that would communicate his or hers needs to the trainer or master. Naturally the most common or popular request these dogs invariably chose was “Go Out,” “Play,” and “Eat” or “Food.”
There were multiple buttons the subject dog had options to press. The results were both obvious and interesting. As you can see from the four most popular quoted words, they wanted something that they enjoyed such as going outside, playing, or eating. What was interesting about the results were words that conveyed complex emotions or feelings. They also had buttons such “Sad,” “Mad,” “I love you,” and “Happy,” were included, and dogs pressed those very buttons expressing their feelings.
Like I said, these particular dog breeds are highly intelligent and easier to train. So there is a bit of a bias in this study that tells us that not all dog breeds are intelligent enough to figure out these buttons and received what they desired.
That being said, I can’t see why the same study couldn’t be done on other animals as well, such as cats, horses, cows, or birds. The results most likely, I feel, would be the same, based mostly on these animal’s particular breed and how they interact with humans.
My housecat, Tommy, as an example, is highly intelligent and does many things that are not something I trained him to do, but has invariably surprised me in so many ways. As an example, he communicates his desires to the point that he almost sounds like he’s attempting to express words for what he needs. If he wants out, he has learned to drop the m sound, so it sounds almost like “out.” If he wants to get fed, which he does quite often at his young adult age, he will meow with a hard m sound so that he’s at a pleading emotion.
My Amazon, Elsa knows when it’s her bedtime. She will go inside her cage and close the gate. She hasn’t figured out how to lock it, but it is telling how intelligent these animals are.
Here’s another example of Tommy’s intelligence. Back in November when we set our clocks back to standard time, he was all in a panic that I wasn’t getting out of bed at the normal time I get up, which would have been an hour ahead, and Tommy freaked out because of it.
I also converse with both animals in a normal conversational tone that appears to puts them at ease seemingly knowing that I care about them.
Jerry Schellhammer 