'What's that Skip?' Researchers say kangaroos can communicate with people

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/dec/16/whats-that-skip-researchers-kangaroos-communicate-talk-people

by MaxBarraclough • 6 years ago

43 30 6 years ago

theguardian.com

MaxBarraclough• 6 years ago

The paper itself: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0607

The BBC have a short video with the authors: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-australia-55312356

bitwize• 6 years ago

Injured wild elephants have been known to go to human camps for first aid:

https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/news/updates/mwende-s...

Maybe this is less surprising, though, because elephants exhibit near-primate levels of intelligence.

grecy• 6 years ago

Oh, elephants do all kinds of intelligent/emotional stuff like mourn their dead, seek revenge on humans decades after they killed a member of the herd, etc. etc.

OJFord• 6 years ago

I had a 'wow, elephants are incredible' moment recently, watching an episode of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raja,_Rasoi_Aur_Anya_Kahaniyaa...

It was just a brief clip, a sort of scene setting background shot, but really amazing to me for some reason - there were a couple of elephants being bathed by humans, looking like it was such bliss, and with total cooperation.

I don't know, I can't really describe it, I know that doesn't sound that incredible, it just looked extraordinary, liked they'd lived and worked and played and bathed together for many years - they probably had - like you wouldn't see any difference if they chatted too.

meowface• 6 years ago

Evolution has occurred over the past 3.5 billion years, and, relatively speaking, our common ancestor isn't all that distant. There could also be some convergent evolution. We're very different from elephants, but our brains are also similar in a lot of ways. There's "something it's like to be an elephant" that we can never know, but which might not be so drastically different from our own experiences that we couldn't ever envision it.

That feeling we experience when we socialize with each other might very well be close to the feeling they experience, too. It may generate the same neurotransmitter activity, the same subjective emotions, maybe the same feeling of empathy. Perhaps not, but it's certainly very plausible, especially if you observe them for a long period of time. Who knows, maybe it's even near-identical in some regards.

masswerk5• 6 years ago

I'm not surprised. It's just that we, as a species, are paticularly bad when it comes to communicating with other species, or, at least, are not that interested in it, and others prove to be better in this. We should avoid projecting our own deficits.

vlovich123• 6 years ago

I’d say we’re pretty interested in learning. We study inter species communication all the time as a species don’t we? We communicate with dogs regularly. The challenge is that we haven’t learned how to have higher-order communication which makes it challenging (we learn to communicate primarily with the species, primarily mammals, we co-habitate with). The more distant evolutionarily from us the harder it is to communicate for us as there’s less commonality and more technological assistance needed.

friendlybus• 6 years ago

There's an attempt to refine the normal dog-human interpretative dance into a more formal setup.

Some people are using buttons to get the dog to reply in a context format rather than just gauging enthusiasm for a given task.

https://www.hungerforwords.com

I don't think higher order communication between adults is that simple either. There's a lot of inference and deriving from implication that is prone to error.

masswerk5• 6 years ago

However, there's plenty of evidence that various species have cracked human communication, at least partly so, while we haven't that much to show…

newsbinator• 6 years ago

Which species is better at communicating inter-species than we are?

masswerk5• 6 years ago

Let's say, all those where some individuals manage to adopt human speech, like various birds, some whales, chimps, etc, or manage to interact with human language symbols by means of sign language or similar. This is quite impressive. To my knowledge, we, while far better equipped, haven't intruded a single communication system of an other species in a way that we could meaningful interact or even use their intrinsic concepts. On a less complex scale, but still impressive are those, who manage to interpret some human practices, like pointing. (Mind that this requires some kind of mirroring to construct an assumed line of sight and some assumptions about what the other might have in mind and what might be an object of interest and engaging in some sort of dialog over this.)

jawarner• 6 years ago

dogs

mattowen_uk• 6 years ago

Anecdotally, We got a couple of Bengal cats a few years ago. We got into the habit of saying 'Hello <cat-name>' every time a cat walked into the room.

Now the cats say 'eh-owww' whenever they see us, and also say the same phrase in different ways depending on what they want/need. It took us a while to work out the meanings of the intonations, but now we are pretty good at working out if it's a greeting, request, or just acknowledgement.

I'm not sure who trained who, but it seems to work. :D

b0rsuk3• 6 years ago

I think Christianity and Age of Reason (Enlightement) are both to blame. Christianity says humans were god's best creation, Enlightement - the pinnacle of evolution. I heard Islam has, or used to have, a much friendlier approach(nothing related to goats) and it remains to this day in countries like Turkey. People are friendly towards stray animals and even build houses for them. The West instead divides them into pets, wild, and livestock.

masswerk5• 6 years ago

It could also be that interest in communication is generally an "uphill game". Which may not be that fortunate in case of contact with an advanced civilization:

We: "Hey, we want to share our science and philosophy and what we found out about the universe!"

Alien scientist (looking at some advanced gauges): "Look, its temperature rises."

;-)

codetrotter• 6 years ago

Title is in reference to that TV show about Skippy the bush kangaroo. That was an enjoyable show, and one I haven’t thought about in ages.

bigmattystyles• 6 years ago

Oh man, this is super specific and I am sure will apply to almost no one but - I was a kid in the late 80s, early 90s France and a popular comedy trio had a skit about a cult with a leader referred to as a grand guru named Skippy.(Grand guru when said fast in French sounds even more like kangaroo). My brother and I had that joke 'Grand Guru Skippy' for years! We got the grand guru <-> kangaroo part, but never knew there was a show with a Kangaroo named Skippy. That makes it even funnier. (The video won't make sense if you don't speak French, but in case there are others like me here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_3hIoUGbls

gadders3• 6 years ago

For people unfamiliar with Skippy, think Lassy but with a kangaroo instead of a dog.

If you haven't seen Lassy, I can't help you.

qznc• 6 years ago

I also remember Fury the horse and Flipper the dolphin in the same genre.

b0rsuk3• 6 years ago

Green said the research did not mean anyone should approach kangaroos in the wild with an unopenable box full of food, expecting to have a chat with them.

I'm glad they are so explicit about it XD

Prcmaker• 6 years ago

I've helped a roo out of a tangle with a wire fence before. It was cut up fairly bad, clearly in pain, but clearly understood I was there to help. It held still when I needed it to, much like I would if a buddy were helping me out of the same fence. Untangled in maybe a minute, would have been unachievable if they didn't stop thrashing.

'What's that Skip?' Researchers say kangaroos can communicate with people

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