The animals speak/The basic speech

Body expression

The most basic speech does not need words. One can speak simply by showing oneself. If an animal shows his anger, he "says" that he is angry:

Not so fearful (in The fearful)

When an animal shows himself thus, he asks to the one who looks at him to perceive his anger. He wants its anger to be perceived. One can translate into words such an expression: "I'm angry", or "I'm the male", or "Go away", or perhaps all this at the same time. But in order to understand it as a speech it is not necessary to choose a verbal translation, because the voluntary demonstration of anger is a basic speech without words. It is basic because it does not need words to make sense. But words could not make sense if there was not at first this basic speech. A phrase like "I'm angry" would not make sense if we were not able to voluntarily show our anger. The silent language of body expression precedes verbal expression. It is the foundation from which we can give meaning to words.

Note about the shooting: it is one of the rare times when I allowed myself to voluntarily stress an animal by insisting with the gaze of the camera. I wanted to film this scene, which I had seen several times without filming it. From now on I always present myself to the tamarin, turning my back to him, stooping as much as possible, and peering at him from under my shoulder. This is usually enough to soothe him. He then pretends not to have noticed me while casting a few brief glances at me to make sure of his authority.

The basic speech does not need words, but it needs concepts. To have the concept of danger, it is not necessary to know the word, it is enough to be able to perceive danger. All animals which are afraid show that they have this faculty, and therefore that they use the concept of danger.

How far do animals use concepts? To know the richness and extent of the perception of concepts by animals, and their communication, we can observe them and communicate with them by using our own animal faculties. We do not know in advance what they are going to tell us, and understanding them is not always easy.

Influence the imagination and the will

Speech is the voluntary emission of signals to influence the imagination and the will of those who receive them.

Do animals have imagination, will and knowledge of the mind?

An animal has imagination when he is able to represent internally what he does not perceive directly by his senses. He has knowledge of the mind when he can imagine that he is at the other's place (Précis of epistemology/Perception, imagination and reflection). He has will when there is in his brain a centralized administration without a central administrator (Précis of epistemology/Emotions, will and attention).

A justly famous and controversial example of animal speech is the alarm cry of the vervet monkey. They have several different cries to signal the approach of the various predators which threaten them: bird of prey, leopard, snake ... and they react accordingly. If, for example, they hear the cry which signals a snake, they stand and look intently on the grass to see the snake they have not seen. This shows that the cry makes them imagine the snake.

Imagination does not consist only in the formation of visual or auditory images. To imagine a dangerous being for example, it is enough to simply activate one's danger detector. A vervet monkey can detect a snake directly, by seeing it, or indirectly, through an alarm cry. The cry enables him to activate his snake detector while he has not seen it, hence he imagines that snake he has not seen.

But does the monkey which utters the cry know that he influences the imagination of his fellows? And does he want it?

Knowledge of the mind

To have knowledge of the mind requires an imagination sufficiently developed to imagine oneself and others as beings who imagine and want, and this imagination must be used to anticipate the consequences of one's and other's actions.

We can define the animal mind from the knowledge of the mind. An animal mind is an animal capable of knowing the mind, that is, capable of imagining himself and others as beings who imagine and want. To be a mind is to imagine the mind. To be born as a mind is to know the mind. We recognize that there is no vicious circle in such a definition when we know that principles enable us to define fundamental concepts. This definition is of course a theoretical choice among others. This is the choice in this book, but there are other ways to use the concept of mind.

The scientific point of this book of movies is to show that animals prove by their speech that they know the mind, at least the most evolved among them.

Blind instinct or lucid imagination?

How do we know if an animal knows what he does or blindly obeys his instincts? And how do we know if he has knowledge of the mind?

That an animal acts to attain a goal does not prove that he imagined it in advance and that he decided in its favor. Instinct may suffice to make him act without knowing what he is doing, without having really wanted it. But an imaginative animal may be much more intelligent than an animal which blindly obeys its instincts. It is by showing us their intelligence, the variety and richness of their activities that animals show us their imagination and their will, when they have them. Even if an isolated observation does not always allow us to conclude, the precise knowledge of their ways of living leaves little room for doubt.

The same applies to the knowledge of the mind. When they possess this faculty, animals may exhibit a much more extensive and remarkable intelligence than if they are deprived of it. To prove that they have knowledge of the mind, we must observe them well enough to know the intelligent behavior which proves it.

Speech is vital

To believe that animals do not speak is to ignore everything about their lives. They interact constantly with their fellows, of the same species or not, and they must conceive these interactions: friend or enemy? Dominant or dominated? Sex partner? And so on. They need to talk to live. Speech is vital. It is not an accompaniment which could be dispensed with, but a fundamental part of life. Animals could not live if they did not talk to each other. To understand their speech, one must know their lives, because they speak to live.