Slashdot Mirror
Former Slashdot Contributor Jon Katz Believes He Can Talk To Animals (amazon.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland got a surprise when he visited his local bookstore:
Jon Katz turns 70 this August, and he's published a new book called Talking to Animals: How You Can Understand Animals and They Can Understand You. Katz was a former newspaper reporter (and a contributing editor to Rolling Stone) who wrote for HotWired, the first online presence for Wired magazine in the mid-1990s, before becoming a controversial contributor to Slashdot during the site's early days. Katz left Manhattan in the 1990s to live on a farm "surrounded by dogs, cats, sheep, horses, cows, goats, and chickens," according to the book's description, an experience he writes about on his blog. His new book promises that Katz now "marshals his experience to offer us a deeper insight into animals and the tools needed for effectively communicating with them."
Hey, now - this was back when /. was being actively developed. We have Katz to thank for the "no stories by this submitter" filter. It's come in every so handy in the subsequent years.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The chickens I live next to talk to me all the time. Idiots on slashdot are free to call me names, but I do understand much of what they say. There isn't much to understand, really, they're rather simple-minded.
Usually they say, "I see you, I'm right here. I see you, I'm right here. I see you, I'm right here." That sounds like, "bok. bok bok. bok."
Sometimes they say, "I just laid the most wonderful egg, I'm so happy I laid this egg, it is the best egg ever because I laid it." That sounds like "bok bok baGOK, bok bok baGOK, bok bok baGOK."
Rarely they're having a crisis, like malfunctioning water source, and they'll say, "bagokbagokbagok? bagok? bagokbagok?"
If they're free range they also have a bunch of phrases relating to food, which mostly translate to, "dibs! dibs! hey, I called dibs you jerk! dibs! dibs!" They also have descriptive terms for the quality of food, but I doubt a human is going to translate that as easily as the above. But it is often obvious what the topic and general thrust of conversation is.