When the discussion turned to animal response to language, I thought I would mention talking birds--specifically, my daughter's cockatoos.
When I remarked that one of them said very sensible sounding things, I was told that she once said, being out of doors at twilight, "Its's raining." My daughter said, "No, you silly bird, it's getting dark". I thought that, since the bird was afraid of rain and of the dark, that wasn't really silly, just a minor confusion of "words for things I'm afraid of".
Another of her birds, seeing a human infant in a vet's waiting room, and not being accustomed to such, asked "What kind of bird is that?"
Now, are these birds more intelligent than their wild kin who have no human contact, thus no human vocabulary?
Is it risky business to keep teaching chimps, gorillas, and yes, perhaps dogs and birds "better" ways of communicating, even after seeing PLANET OF THE APES?
But now I don't know if I'm communicating with anyone or if you all minimized AWAD TALK and went web-surfing. Or just surfing.
