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OP
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This story Squirrels make 'silent scream' - see below - reminds me of new research pointing at the human-like cognitive skills of chimpanzees, the ape, Koko, and the "fast mapping" abilities of the border collie, Rico. Most of this research is very, very new [how long has ASL itself been around?] and, while our skepticim is perfectly justified, researchers need time and money to conduct more rigorous studies. Is all of this 'hrrump' about Koko's abilities faintly reminiscent of the initial public reaction to Darwin's "Origin of the Species"? Dispassionate skepticism is one thing. Unstudied disdain another [so it seems to me]. BTW many of our own AWAD pundits are focusing exclusively on Koko in expressing skepticism regarding "cross-species" ASL mastery, but, as I understand the reports, this mastery is not unique to Koko but had been demonstrated in many chimpanzees long before Koko became a media favorite. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3932943.stmBTW is hrrump a word? I couldn't find it in American Heritage dictionary, but was the meaning lost on anyone who read it in this post? If everyone understands what "hrrump" means, if it isn't a word, what is it? If it isn't a "word", it functions like a "word" and if enough people use it often enough it will certainly become a "word". Perhaps it is only a "pre-word". Is there such a thing as a "pre-word", I wonder.
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journeyman
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journeyman
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Hey Plutarch, those Richardson Ground Squirrels got me to thinking. As follows... Since the necessary pre-adaptations involve both sending silent alarms and receiving silent alarms, it seems likely that both abilities were selected and enhanced from a pre-existing wide audible range simultaneously. What about humans like you and me? Is whispering merely a degraduation of loud talk, or have we too evolved a specialized audible version of the inaudible squirrel screams? Try this experiment...say "Be quite! Here he comes!" in a loud voice. Then begin lowering your voice in stages until it is almost inaudible. Notice what happens near the lower end of the scale. At one point the continuum of your lowering voice breaks abruptly into a whisper. A whisper which is vastly different from the construct of the spoken word, and a system of communication that uses very different combinations of air flow and larynx, lips, and mouth. Human kids don't have to go to school to learn to whisper. The ability to whisper is innate with our species and for many years whispering kept us fed and helped us from being eaten. ( This post, of course, is an aside. I'll return in a moment and address one of your many central points. ) 
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The ability to whisper is innate with our species and for many years whispering kept us fed and helped us from being eaten.Never thought about that before, Amemeba. Interesting. And, then, of course, there is the "whispering campaign", which is completely inaudible to the target. It occurs to me that a whispered lie can be far more powerful than a well-articulated truth, even a demonstrated truth, in some circles. But, in some circles, "the circle" is the religion, not "the word".
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Hrrump is a word but it is properly spelled hurrumph. source - any English novel written prior to 1960 and having as a charactor a military person ranked colonel or above. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Or either Harrumph®!, one. But that's a registered trademark of Annadage Enterprises.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I think it was Robert Frost who commented either in conversation or in a poem that a surefire way to be heard is to whisper. Whatever the occasion of his comment may have been, for I have forgotten it over the years, he was observing that people will ignore a conversation in the next room until it drops into a whisper. Suddenly: every word is heard. Ha.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Harrumph®!, one. But that's a registered trademark of Annadage Enterprises
that may only apply locally..
Main Entry: har·rumph
Pronunciation: h&-'r&m(p)f
Function: intransitive verb
Etymology: imitative (1942)
1 : to clear the throat in a pompous way
2 : to comment disapprovingly
©2004 Merriam-Webster Inc.
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addict
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people will ignore a conversation in the next room until it drops into a whisper
How true, Wordwind, but sometimes you have to turn up the volume to be heard, as this story illustrates:
Two young boys were spending the night at their grandparents. At bedtime, the two boys knelt beside their beds to say their prayers when the youngest one began praying at the top of his lungs, "I PRAY FOR A NEW BICYCLE. I PRAY FOR A NEW NINTENDO. I PRAY FOR A NEW VCR..."
His older brother leaned over and nudged the younger brother and said, "Why are you shouting your prayers? God isn't deaf."
To which the little brother replied, "No, but Gramma is!"
BTW I wonder how many people who enjoy "Karaoke" know that it is a Japanese word meaning "tone deaf".
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addict
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P.S. re "Karaoke" means "tone deaf".
Actually, that's just a rumor.
The Japanese word stems from the words: "kara" (‹ó) which means 'empty' (same as in Karate Karate or karate-do (‹óŽè“¹), a Japanese martial art introduced to the Japanese main islands from Okinawa in 1922) and "oke" which is short for 'orchestra'.
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