How do Animals Communicate with Each Other?
If animals do not have the ability to speak, it doesn’t mean that they don’t communicate with each other: do not pass each other different information, share emotions, don’t express dissatisfaction and anger.
Why do Animals Need to “talk”?
All animals constantly solve two main tasks:
Survival. To survive, you need to find (or get) food, defend your territory and be able to save your life in the fight if necessary.
Reproduction. To do this, you need to find a partner, win the competition and be a good enough parent to feed the offspring, protect and teach everything necessary for survival.
When solving these problems, it is necessary to communicate with relatives, and sometimes to understand representatives of other species. So it is vital for animals to develop their “native language” and learn “foreign” languages.
We know about meowing and barking, but how do other animals communicate?
Dolphins
Dolphins are simply unique animals, whose sound are not available to the human ear, and also communicate at an incredibly high speed, individual sounds in their communication can be distinguished only if you slow down the recording. In addition, dolphins are able to distinguish the languages of other animals, such as whales.
Dolphins have more developed ears than eyes. This is due to the fact that water is a good conductor of sounds. Dolphins communicate in a special language, some of its sounds resemble a door creak. Scientists have been studying the language of these mammals for a long time, but have not yet been able to decipher it. Researchers agree on only one thing-it is quite complex, and the same sound can mean completely different things.
Cats
It turns out that the cat’s meow is used only for communication with people: for example, to ask for food or to attract attention. But cats communicate with each other through ultrasound, as well as body language and looks.
Some of the most characteristic cat sounds are purring, which cats make only when they feel comfortable enough, as well as snorting and hissing, emitted by cats in case of anger. These sharp sounds, accompanied, as a rule, also by appropriate body movements, without unnecessary “words” indicate the formidable mood of the animals. If the cat began to growl like a dog, then it is very bad: this is a sign that the animal is in the extreme of its anger. Sometimes cats are able to make sounds that resemble a bird’s chirp, which still cannot be deciphered: perhaps this is an expression of attention or annoyance.
Frogs
We have all heard the croaking of frogs repeatedly, especially their songs during the mating season. However, more often frogs communicate at a frequency that is not accessible to the human ear, thus protecting themselves from people. In addition, such sounds are heard by amphibians even through the noise of the surrounding nature.
Whales
It is whales that are considered the loudest animal on the planet, because the power of sounds produced by them is incredible: they can be heard 1,600 kilometers from the source, and such a sound could drown out the roar of an airplane engine.
Ants
The Ant family is an unusually friendly and disciplined team. Ants, which are rightly considered one of the most intelligent living creatures on our planet, communicate with each other using a special substance secreted by special glands — pheromones. Ants, sensitively perceiving the smell with their long antennae, know exactly where this smell comes from and what it means.
Leaving his home — state-anthill, the ant marks the path traveled with pheromones in order to navigate by smell, not to get lost and return back. The same thing he does when he finds something to eat: leaving pheromones, the ant invites relatives to a meal. In addition, with the help of this amazing substance, ants warn their fellow animals that there is food in a certain place or that the route they used to travel for a long time is now dangerous. Ants in trouble use pheromones to send an alarm signal that causes their “relatives” to immediately rush to their aid and simultaneously send the same alarm signals to other family members. And in a few moments, hundreds of ants are already running to protect their native nest from the enemy.
Elephants
The distance at which elephants are able to communicate at a low frequency reaches as much as 10 kilometers. The researchers claim that they have a whole hierarchy of relationships and ways of communicating, as well as separate words and different voices.
Fish
You will not guess what is used to communicate between fish. It turns out that they give each other signs with the help of movements of the fins, which the fish point to each other on the object of communication.
