On Animal Behavior

In the sentence, the word order. Many Russian-speaking readers of "Computerra" probably experienced difficulties when learning English because it has a fairly rigid word order in sentences. Russian, however: no matter how words are arranged, grammatical forms, cases-conjugations, and characteristic word endings will help unravel the puzzle. Apparently, to use English or any other language with a fixed word order, one needs a rather peculiar brain structure. Or is a more complex "onboard computer" needed to use a language with a flexible word order? In any case, our language proficiency does not arise from a vacuum. Human language is governed by brain centers that are also present in anthropoid apes – we inherited them from common ancestors. Our ability to use symbols has roots in the deepest layers of evolution. You might say that we learn to use symbols, while all other animals are programmed only to reproduce them schematically? This is not true. A nightingale chick is born ready to perceive its father's song and, over time, reproduce it. Male nightingales raised in a canary's nest will sing like canaries, and females will only respond to canary songs. If such "canary-singing" individuals are released into the wild, they will simply not find common ground with the natives. The song of male songbirds allows them to form pairs and maintain nesting territories. Females will not react to males singing in a different language as potential partners, and males will not react to them as competitors. But do songbirds perceive the song as a whole, or are they capable of analyzing its individual elements? Psychologist Tim Gentner from the University of California, San Diego, investigated this. He played natural recordings of songs to jackdaws, mixed with constructions into which fragments from other songs of the same birds were smoothly inserted (of course, without audible glitches). These recordings can be compared to human sentences with correct or incorrect word order. The birds were trained to indicate whether a recording was natural or altered by pecking a button on the wall. To the researchers' surprise, most birds coped with the task. Nine out of eleven jackdaws learned to recognize altered grammatical constructions, and only two stumbled over this puzzle. By the way, previous studies have shown that monkeys are not capable of handling similar tests. We are connected to the living beings around us by countless threads...

Wow! In "KT" #638, it was reported that jackdaws can evaluate the order of "words" in a "sentence" (individual sound signals in their sequence), unlike, for example, monkeys. Not much time has passed, and Scottish researchers have found that monkeys are also capable of constructing something similar to semantic constructions. As is known, the sound signaling of many African guenons includes elements of danger classification. For example, some species have different signals for "eagle" (threat from above), "leopard" (predator nearby in hiding), and "snake" (something frightening on the ground underfoot) dangers. Large-nosed guenons (Cercopithecus nictitans) use only the first two of these three signals, but they can form a "phrase" from them that differs in meaning from the sum of the two elements. A combination of several repeated "leopard" and "eagle" sounds can be uttered by a leader both when visually detecting a predator and in its absence. In both cases, the reaction is the same: the flock moves. It can be assumed that initially, moving aside was used to reduce the probability of a predator attack and, as a result, was associated with danger signals. By the way, true language appears precisely when a new stimulus is combined not with a new signal, but with a combination and reinterpretation of old ones.

Reflection of your voice... Dolphins are among the animals capable of echolocation. This method of orientation uses reflections from surrounding objects of special locating sounds – usually sharp signals at a wavelength that propagates well in the medium and reflects off obstacles. It seems that in the psyche of animals that use echolocation (besides dolphins, these are cave swiftlets, some seals, and, of course, bats), an acoustic-volumetric picture of the world is formed. Interestingly, objects in it can be semi-transparent: most likely, the friendly attitude of dolphins towards humans is due to the fact that their lungs "sound" inside our bodies, a characteristic feature of dolphins themselves as marine mammals. Creatures with lungs can drown; if they make sharp movements on the water surface, they need support... The distance to an object is determined by the time elapsed from the moment the signal is emitted to the return of the echo. It is clear that it is best to navigate this way alone. By emitting a sound, the animal reduces the sensitivity of its auditory receptor and then listens to faint echoes. It's worse when several locators are working nearby. External locating sounds drown out the echo of one's own cry, and one's own and external reflections get mixed up. Bats in colonies solve a complex problem by isolating the reflections of their own voices from the general gamma. Dolphins use an even more complex but beautiful solution. German biologist Thomas Götz from the University of Tübingen has established that dolphins navigate by the echoes of both their own and others' voices. This is not difficult to prove: if dolphins swim in a group, only one actively echolocates. The others have to solve a more complex task: to calculate the distance not only to the obstacle but also from the sound source. To facilitate this task, dolphins move in formation. It is likely that the features of such a formation are the result of optimizing both hydrodynamic and hydroacoustic parameters. An unexpected interpretation of the described observations belongs to Steve Dawson from the University of Otago, New Zealand. He suggests that dolphins' deciphering of others' signals explains why these highly developed animals have not developed language. What can a linguistic message convey? Information about the speaker's internal state, as well as about the external world. The inner world of dolphins is reflected in their voices, and the external world is reflected in the echoes of their voices. Why say "fish" when you can simply say "I," and the interlocutor will "hear" the fish through the echo at the same time as the speaker?

He who multiplies knowledge multiplies sorrow Scientists from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland examined how the learning ability of Drosophila flies is related to their ability to survive without food and water. Those flies whose learning required many training sessions lived in stressful conditions for approximately 25% longer than those who learned new experiences in a single session. The explanation proposed by the experimenters is that rapid learning requires significant expenditure for the synthesis of proteins necessary for long-term memory. It is this wastefulness that can shorten life in conditions where it is crucial to conserve remaining resources. In general, there is nothing unexpected in the published result. A generalization known as the Matthew-Kermack principle has long been known. This principle states that when comparing similar objects (individuals in a population, populations in a genus, species in a higher taxonomic group, etc.), the levels of adaptation to different factors are inversely proportional. Those who can withstand high doses of X-ray radiation are worse at running long distances and worse at solving differential equations. Do you think the division of processors into fast and economical is a result of a marketer conspiracy? Unfortunately, this is a consequence of general systemic patterns. To simplify, the Matthew-Kermack principle can be called the "trade-off" rule (and use constructions like "dumb, but beautiful" to explain it; however, this is an oversimplification, as it is entirely possible that intelligence and beauty are closely related parameters). The experimenters from Switzerland now wonder if humans have to pay for the high functionality of their own brains. However, to answer this question, one doesn't even need to starve the flies. In many cases, knowledge brings sorrow, and he who multiplies knowledge...

D. Shabanov. On word order in a sentence // Kompyuterra, Moscow, 2006. – No. 18 (638) D. Shabanov. Alarm! // Kompyuterra, Moscow, 2006. – No. 21 (641) D. Shabanov. Reflections of your voice… // Kompyuterra, Moscow, 2006. – No. 5 (625) D. Shabanov. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow // Kompyuterra, Moscow, 2005. – No. 33 (605). — P. 19