Animal Communication

Dale Kennedy, Ph.D., Professor of Biology emerita, Albion College. Mondays. 10 a.m. – 12 noon. May 1, 8, 15, 22. In person. Ludington 113, with one class at Whitehouse Nature Center. Class limit: 25.

Coordinator: Carolyn Gaswick. Email: cgaswwick@albion.edu

Animal communication has long been of interest to humans, and writings on this topic have come from many people, including Aristotle, Charles Darwin (1872 book, On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals), and E. O. Wilson (a theory of chemical communication). In this class we will examine some of the diverse systems of communication among animals from an evolutionary perspective.

We will begin by asking, what is communication? We will briefly discuss a model by Claude Shannon (1948), an engineer for Bell Labs who grew up in Michigan. His model involved several components: a sender (signaler), a signal, and a receiver (perceiver), and, importantly, added the impact of noise on the transmission of a signal.

We will then address a variety of questions:

• How do non-human animals communicate?
• What are examples of the different types of signals (acoustic, visual, chemical, and others) used by animals?
• Are signals honest from the perspectives of both sender and receiver?
• Is there eavesdropping on signals by non-target species? Which types of signals of other animals can we detect (and which not)?
• How do environmental factors and changes to the environment such as acoustic noise, light pollution, and water pollution impact signals and communication? (And what can we do to help reduce some of the problems caused to animals?)
• What is vocal learning, and what animals exhibit it?
• What, if anything, distinguishes non-human animal communication from human language?

We will meet for one class, probably the last one, in Whitehouse Nature Center, to look for local examples of animal communication. I will send out materials, including some writings and some videos, before each class. If you want a book on the topic, I recommend Animal Talk: Breaking the Codes of Animal Language, by Tim Friend (Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2004). Used copies of this book are available through many sources online.