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."

Comments

His book's title needs modification, I'm afraid

[bogaboga]

The title, "How You Can Understand Animals and They Can Understand You" needs an edit to:

How You Can Understand "domesticated" Animals and They Can Understand You.

This is because he's only dealt with such animals and none from the wild. If he's up to the challenge, I welcome him to the Sahara, where coming face to face with some of its four legged inhabitants [without protection], immediately invokes the question, "Could you be my next meal?" in the animal's mind.

Re:Lol

[Immerman]

My cat understands a great deal more English than that - she'll meow at the window to come in, and will wait until I tell her to "got to the door" - no other statement will send her off to the door. Similarly she has a distinctive "yes" and "no" meows, and we can play a belabored 20 questions when she wants something. Her vocabulary is limited, and it's usually easier to just tell her to "show me" and follow her, but that doesn't work for everything.

Just like with dogs, the trick is to use a limited and consistent vocabulary of words and phrases (and intonations - they're usually a lot more sensitive to pitch for recognition than English normally is) to communicate ideas so that they can understand you, and to take the time to learn at least their basic communications (and to clearly and immediately indicate your understanding, especially when starting out, so that they learn what noises/motions to use to communicate with you)

These are social animals after all, and you need only watch them for a while to see that they communicate at least basic concepts amongst themselves, and even between species. There's absolutely no reason we can't do the same with them. Well, except for the lack of a tail - that does give us a pretty severe speech impediment.