A talking animal or speaking animal refers to any non-human animal which can produce sounds (or gestures) resembling those of a human language. Many species or groups of animals have developed forms of Animal Communication Systems (ACS) which to some appear to be a verbal language. These are not defined as language in the human sense—they lack grammar, syntax, recursion, and displacement. Studies in animal cognition have been successful in teaching some animals speech or sign, similar to sign language, but not defined as such. In the case of Koko the gorilla, for example, Koko was unable to break away from the here-and-now (displacement) in her signs. This among others represent various hallmarks of human language that Koko and similar animals have been unable to achieve.
Read more about Talking Animal: On Imitation and Understanding, On Formality of Animal Language
Famous quotes containing the words talking and/or animal:
“Too much rain is not good,
nor too much sun.
Too much talking is not good,
nor too much silence.”
—Punjabi proverb, trans. by Gurinder Singh Mann.
“Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)