Activity

“There are certain animals that we love, defend and even revere precisely because of their sentience, because they seem to possess minds similar to our own. After Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey brought the intelligence and kinship of chimpanzees and gorillas into the limelight, increasing resources were channeled into saving the great apes from habitat destruction and poaching. Following John Lilly’s research and writing on dolphin communication in the 1960s, the cetaceans gained an almost cultlike following. Most recently there has been increasing backlash against the captivity of elephants and orcas, highly communal and empathic species. Nothing of the sort has happened for prairie dogs. If Slobodchikoff is right about their language — to say nothing of all the other undeciphered clucks, yawps and bellows on Earth — then we will have been the cause of, and the indifferent witness to, the annihilation of a species that helped transform our understanding of animal minds. To recognize that we are not alone, that we share our world with other conscious, thinking, speaking beings, requires us to sacrifice a great deal of ego. At the same time, it folds us, palpably and inextricably, into the fabric of a much grander universe. As it stands, our greatest chance of achieving such a breakthrough may not require radio telescopes or interstellar travel but rather a new appreciation for a raucous rodent in our vast grassy backyard. Assuming, that is, that we don’t lose — or invent — anything in translation.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/magazine/can-prairie-dogs-talk.html?_r=0

Can Prairie Dogs Talk?An Arizona biologist believes that their sounds should be considered language — and that someday we’ll understand what they have to say.