EnviroLink Forum

I agree with you Ann but the point and question is .... why is there such a robust industry around this particular type of animal exploitation in the first place. If the opposition to such facilities exist here and in Europe ... they will surely proliferate in other countries to take our place. Is this reason to oppose? Should we continue? The research will continue regardless .... this is true. So should we bow down to it? Should it go unquestioned because other countries will step in?

I'm not sure that the poeple in North America or Europe are raising them in careful conditions ... since they are for profit.

note I am not criticizing the goal but rather saying this particular method (stopping the transport of laboratory animals) is counter-productive. For me, I figure the best way to help the animals is to help the ones doing the research to do it the best way possible. Such cooperation is out of the question for most AR activists though so thus I have to prepare to resist attacks by AR activists myself as I develop better ways to raise animals in large numbers.

Not sure I get your meaning. For instance, the best way to produce eggs efficeintly is to pulverize the male chicks. Some would call this 'welfare".

You are raising animals for the labs so that they need not be imported in ways that are considered inhumane?

Sorry, I was not specific enough... I meant to raise them in the best way for the welfare of the animals. Of course such methods have to also be cost effective or they will not be adopted but the goal is better lives of the animals first and then trying to make such better methods to be of a minimal negative impact to the "bottom line" is only a secondary goal to make easy to convince others to do those methods


I doubt I will get to the level of supplying laboratory animals but will stick to providing pet store rodents as pets (although that might include frozen reptile/raptor food). It is the development and testing of equipment and methods that I will concentrate on. This will include trying to find ways of determining preferences of the animals including trying to develop 2-way communication with some species so I can learn more how they think so I am not just guessing what they might like.

To me as an animal researcher it really is not difficult to grasp, and it should not be to anyone else either: if you want to to do animal research, your approval to do so depends on you arguing why you use animals, which animals, and how many, according to the 3R principle of reducement in numbers, refinement (of techniques, so as to get the best results, and also the first R), and maybe, just maybe, replacement (which may depend on the second R - for instance, we now can do many things with cell cultures). So you want top quality, purpose bred animals, disease free, maybe of a particular strain, or with a certain mutation or genetic manipulation that makes those animals better models. Commercial animal breeding companies can only make money by providing such animals, and like the farmer, neglecting welfare and not giving sufficient care means you lose animals, then customers and there goes your profit. Captive bred animals will not be upset by laboratory conditions (less stress), and not having to transport them over great distances by in-house or at least within-country breeding is the best. And forget what I think was in one of the above comments - animals are not cheap - they are very expensive, even a simple mouse costs big dollars. Even if you are not much of an ethicist, all of us are economists.... moreover, where I am, you get approval to use a certain number of animals only after careful screening and providing statistical support, and extra animals beyond approved numbers require good arguments. And Ann: forget about two-way communication with animals - we cannot even do it with chimpanzees except with regard to immediate requests, and a lot of that is not regarded very highly by many. What we can do is look at animals' natural needs and behaviours so that we can provide for the fulfilment of those needs in captivity. But even here there are limits, just as an animal might have those in nature. For a good life with me until he dies (and even that death may be my decision, and spare him the pain of a "natural" death) my horse has been gelded, and although his paddock is several acres he cannot roam free. My cats have a wonderful life but are not allowed to roam, and all have been neutered or spayed too. And nowhere is it written in stone that no animal shall ever suffer some stress, or even a little pain, no more than we can guarantee that for humans. Animals kept totally stress-free suffer from lack of stimulation; my domestic animals are subject to the surgery of desexing, and the stress of vaccinations. You get my drift, I hope...

Thanks for your comment. I have looked at providing laboratory animals because they do fetch a good price (as in 100-200 times as much compared to pets) but the facilities to do so are expensive to build. When I said the animals were cheap, I meant compared to the other costs of research, mostly hiring a team of university masters graduates.

Of course it is just speculation that I can achieve 2-way communication but I think the chosen species have an advantage over chimpanzees. Some humans have lost the ability to speak from some rather minor brain damage yet usually retain the ability to understand and often to write their language. This is due to the high number of areas of the brain that are needed for verbal language creation. Some burrowing animal species that are active in the day and live in colonies (fossorial, diurnal, communal) have genetic pressure to provide more meaning to the warning calls of their colony members so they respond correctly while they are hiding in holes and cannot check what is happening without risking the predator being at the entrance of the hole. Two of such fossorial diurnal communal species (Richardson Ground Squirrels and Gunnison Prairie Dogs) have been carefully tested and confirmed to have a complex verbal language. Two more more species (coruros and a meerkat species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coruro) are currently being studied for complex language. If they already have a verbal language in the wild (and all those parts of the brain functioning together correctly), it is possible that they can be encouraged to use that same language in other ways then just warning calls. I may not achieve this but I am going to try. Degus are fossorial diurnal communal animals who make an incredible number of unique sounds among individuals that have been bred in captivity for about 70 generations and they are already in the pet trade for decades. Richardson ground squirrels live in high numbers where I live (to the point of having hunts where several million tails have been turned in yearly) and make good pets too. Those will be two of the species I will start with.

One way to have a good pet is to pick one that can act natural and still fit into our lives. The natural behaviors of cats and dogs have made them shine above other species as pets. I am thinking there may be other species that can fit human life well and especially with modern electronics. Two-way communication via computers would be neat and fun and could provide a fun and exciting life for the animal... if verbal communication is a natural part of their wild life. If I don't achieve this or only in limited fashion, I can still develop superior living quarters and toys that can be copied in a laboratory setting (or on fur farms or as people's pets or endangered wildlife recovery efforts).

It is important to distinguish between language and communication though. Many animals have distinct sounds for distinct situations. Not only monkeys, but chickens too have sounds that indicate that a predator is on the ground or in the air. Language is about being able to combine sounds to produce more complex meanings or modify "statements". Monkeys too have now been shown to modify predator calls to imply something like "I thought a saw a leopard". Nevertheless, I doubt whether they, or ground squirrels, could ask me whether I saw a predator...

The methods of testing the ground squirrels and the prairie dogs was to send intruders through their colony and see their reaction and also record their call. For different types of predator, they responded differently for example, snakes had everyone get above ground because a snake can go down the holes but a badger needed everyone hiding because badgers will try to dig them up and then for a coyote, they would watch the coyote. Then they would play the warning calls and observed the animals reacted correctly for the animal in question even though no intruder was there. This of course only proved they had nouns. With computer analysis, they could then see the differences between calls. Once they figured out what kinds of sounds they were making to be different, they could test for adjectives (color and size of the intruder), verbs (what the intruder is doing), adjectives (direction of travel and speed of travel and position within the colony). These four types of unique "words" were present and understood by the others and put together in simple "sentences." These two species also had very different ways of creating words but both did the whole sentence within short calls and the significant differences within harmonic frequencies in the ultrasonic range (too high for humans to hear) which is a frequency that travels well down holes but also is hard to pinpoint for animals with their ears too far apart (more then the inch or two that separates their ears). As you can see, it is more then just a handful of calls used for specific purposes that is found in most animal species.

This is fascinating Ann ... but who is "they" that are doing these studies and, are these studies reported?

You know, of course, that there is a distinction made between communication and actual language. It is widely believed that animals can communicate but do not do so with language which is a human characteristic. While humans have language as part of the brain's capacity, other animals do not. Humans can communicate through language (although our language-communication accounts for roughly 30% of our total communication while the other 70% is communicated through other means, such as facial expression and body-language in general), animals are not believed to have language .......language and communication are very different things.

Are you suggesting that animals have a kind of communication that could be construed as a kind of language? Or are you suggesting that some animals' communication is much more complex than previously known?

Independent research efforts on those two species and two more research projects (that I know of) are being conducted on two more species (coruros and meerkats). I can find links but not right away. The Richardson Ground Squirrel study was undergraduate efforts that have not been repeated. The Gunnison Prairie Dog studies a believe have been tested by separate experts to get the results published in a number of areas of science.
The key distinction is the complexity of the verbal communication and the use of these vocalizations without any other senses beyond ears (the listeners may be hiding deep in holes while the one conveying the complex information is above ground and quite far away watching the intruder). The vocalizations are also recognized by others through recordings and recognized in neighboring colonies but after a significant distance, some "words" begin to lose meaning suggesting local dialects. This is very much a symbolic abstract representation of meaning so can be classed as language the same as humans use. This is a new understanding accomplished by advanced computer equipment and recording electronics (to analyze supersonic frequencies) so we would not have discovered this until recently. Note that this sort of equipment has discovered that male laboratory house mice sing complex songs to the females (ultrasonically) that are similar in complexity and detail length as whale songs and include both cultural content and individual variations. We have a long way to go to really know how much complexity is in non-human communication. I hope to add to that knowledge base by providing a platform for psychological analysis of the brains of non-humans by people around the world using test animal numbers in the thousands rather then a handful of chimpanzees using sign language and icon boards.

Yes, humans are said to have had language before we created visual representations for sounds. I guess one could say that sounds are in themselves symbolic ... representing certain meanings. But could we then not say that a simple growling sound is also language? Although it is not complex, the particular sound of 'growling' (or yelp, or ....) might change from region to region?

One other aspect tested for is the level of cultural influence. Humans that are raised without verbal language (one child raised by mute parents in the wild, several children born deaf then had their hearing restored by surgery) had a very hard time to understand speech even if they knew sign language. This indicates that the parts of the brain needed for understanding verbal speech required use (and the instinct of human babies to babble). They raised some baby prairie dogs in human care then released them into a colony (with a caged introduction stage to prevent being rejected and beat up) and they never vocalized and were confused for a long time as to what the sounds meant. Most animal sounds like growls are instinctual and produced without the intention of communicating. One example is Tasmanian devils. When a lone devil finds a dead animal, it starts screaming and snarling by instinct and all the devils within a mile or two hear this and start snarling themselves and meet up at the dead animal. They are greedy and do not like sharing their meal...so what's up with the dinner call to the other devils? As far as insuring a healthy population of devils, this screaming is a good thing so there is genetic pressure to add that instinct to the devils. They sure don't want to advertize their find but their genome does want them to advertize. This is a rather fuzzy line because prairie dogs as pets will make warning calls when they sense an intruder in the house (and they can tell by the footstep style of the humans if it is their owner or not). That instinct to make a warning call is obviously genetic but the actual specific sounds telling what kind of predator, their size and color, their direction of travel, their actions, and their position within the colony (relative to the sun or relative to the wind... different calls)... that is all cultural and learned by growing up in the colony. That fuzzy line also suggests it is a language rather then an instinct. One thing that is still not clear is if the one making the warning call is doing it by instinct or really intends to be heard. This is where my efforts come into play... I intend to create situations where cooperation is needed by two animals that need to communicate words that they already know the meaning of. I will measure the time it takes for them to figure out that they can use verbal communication to solve the problem (if they figure it out) and then change the parameters of how future pairs of animals (in the same test) learn the needed words (including not knowing an appropriate word ahead of time). This should confirm if they are actually communicating on purpose or just trained (culturally) to make the right calls but not intending to be heard. This can then make a distinction between human language and typical animal sounds (as in the Tasmanian devils) and then place various species on that continuum who use these complex warning calls. That still does not define where on that continuum does it cease to be human-like communication but it helps.

Human language is nothing but sounds. It's just that, no matter what language one speaks, it is all so complex if one is actually a human animal. Humans seem to have very specific portions of the brain that are geared to language .... to the acquisition and understanding of complex symbols. We seem to need to acquire language at a critical point though, otherwise, even humans do not get language if this critical point is missed. There was a case whereby a young child was somehow abandoned by its human parents and spent its time with animals. When it was discovered, it was beyond the point of language acquistion and never learned language at all ....but did know how to communicate through the sounds it had learned from other animals. Can't remember the case. Do you know about it?

I guess I'm wondering, ultimately, how language and communication are distinct from one another? Your research seems to blur or meld the distinction which could have far-reaching implications, especially when you speak of "culture". Usually, the ability for language is implicate in culture.

Sounds like the story of Tarzan. Tarzan was a fictional story but based on a real story of a teenager found in the woods in Europe somewhere. The kid grew up and eventually committed suicide but never spoke. Mowgli from "The Jungle Book" is the main influence cited for Tarzan though and Mowgli did learn human language in that story.

Communication is the activity of sharing information and language is a symbolic representation of meaning that both receiver and sender understand (and thus a common tool for communication).
The only thing blurred is whether or not animals use language to communicate on purpose or by instinct. The science already done by others has confirmed it is a language and it is communicating meaning. What we don't know yet is what level of conscious intent is happening in those little brains of theirs.

The new way of looking at animal behavior is to see how much of that behavior is learned and how much is built into their brains and bodies. The term for behaviors that are learned from parents and colony members on a repeating basis through generations is "culture". This is the term behavior scientists are using now so it does not mean anything typically human.

Is language a knee-jerk reaction or isn't it? Do we use language on purpose or is it instinctual? It's not like we decided to have language, but we are capable of it. We needed it then and we need it now, to communicate.