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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."
People have been talking to animals since time began... it's easy to train them to specific commands and to recognize their body language to know when they're hungry or playful... but I have yet to find anybody able to have a stimulating conversation with one. Even dogs, the animals most adapted to life with humans, aren't capable of that...
Now if he said he had been working with apes and teaching them to sign I might be more willing to believe... but as things stand now I'm pretty sure he's fucking nuts.
See, this is the type of shit that happens when you hang around this place too long..
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I remember when everyone hated him for not actually knowing anything and writing heavily-slanted pieces on whatever bullshit stories people told him that flattered his politics. Little did we know then that the future of blogging was a world of Jon Katzes.
I just asked my dog if he wanted a hug. He gives awesome hugs.
mine gives me awesome tongue kisses.....deep deep tongue kisses.....
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.
Shit nerd is batshit crazy haha.
Once again, the headline is totally misleading. Anyone capable of talking can talk to animals.
Thinking that they understand english and are talking back to you, that may call for a check-up, an MRI, and maybe some meds.
BTW, The bats told me they have nothing to do with this and they resent your assertion about their feces being involved in any way. You will hear from their lawyer as soon as they find one that speaks bat.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
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.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
Mine are perverts.
If you listen carefully, they're saying, "Suck suck suck suck my cock."
They're hens! They don't have a cock. Sheesh.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
This is a perfectly reasonable statement. I talk _with_ animals. I farm and have a large pack of livestock guardian herding dogs. We communicate with about 300 words and phrases. It is two way communications. Some of it is vocal. Some of it is body language. Some of it is sign language. I can tell the dogs things and they can tell me things and they talk to each other - no surprises there. People have been doing it for thousands of years.
What is unfortunate is that urban people have lost this connection to the natural world. Dogs raised as singles don't typically get the cultural knowledge passed down generation to generation like dogs in a farming pack. Pet dogs typically are all alone much of the day and when you get home you greet them and then ignore them in all too many cases. This results in both you and the dog losing the ability to communicate with each other.
Oh, and it isn't just dogs. Pigs have about 30 words they use, sheep use about ten words and chickens use about six words. Learn their words and you can understand what they're talking about as well as talking to them. When we're herding livestock we typically use a couple of the target animal's words to help with the herding. I say we as in both we humans and the dogs. The dogs are multilingual. They pickup the words we use to tell pigs to move forward and they use them too to get the pigs to do the same thing.
A man and his dog walk into a bar. The man says, "I'll bet you a round of drinks that my dog can talk."
Bartender: "Yeah! Sure...go ahead."
Man: "What covers a house?"
Dog: "Roof!"
Man: "How does sandpaper feel?"
Dog: "Rough!"
Man: "Who was the greatest ball player of all time?"
Dog: "Ruth!"
Man: "Pay up. I told you he could talk."
The bartender, annoyed at this point, throws both of them out the door. Sitting on the sidewalk, the dog looks at the guy and asks, "DiMaggio?"
Have gnu, will travel.