The Spirit in Human Evolution - Waldorf Research Institute

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the hive gives detailed information including apparently directional instructions to the
other bees. Experiments have shown that bees can learn new information quickly and
correspondingly change the signals they give.
Further up the scale of animal communication it is obvious that many animals
can give expression to their feelings. Sounds expressing distress, pain, pleasure and even
tiredness—a yawning camel is a sight and sound to behold. Though these sounds are
usually species specific and basically instinctive, they are not necessarily compulsive or
automatic and may even be quite individual. Other animals do not have to respond, they
can ignore them. A bitch may ignore the high pitched yelping of her pups as they play
but would look up if she judged it to be serious or even sufficiently annoying—the same
tolerance level can be witnessed in domestic dogs being pestered by intrusive human
children. An indication of the flexibility this level of communication permits, is the fact
that it reveals levels of experience.
Responding to the escalating threats of a rival in the form of behavior, gesture
and sounds, requires fine judgment if serious bloodshed is to be avoided, which is what
most animals seem to prefer. This kind of judgment improves with experience. It is
therefore usually immature adults that get hurt because they haven’t yet learned to read
the signals.
The next level of communication is more than just an expression of emotion, there
is a definite intention to send some specific message including perhaps a deliberately
misleading one. At one end of this particular spectrum is the system of calls used
by troupes of vervet monkeys to warn other members of potential danger. There are
different alarm calls for various predators, eagle, leopard, snake or, to be specific,
python. On hearing these calls—even tape-recorded versions—the other monkeys take
appropriate evasive action. In a sense the vervet’s leopard call is a kind of reference to
the general concept “leopard,” in other words the alarm call has a similar function to a
noun which is a symbolic referent representing some concept. The difference however
lies in the fact that the alarm call is invariably related to the actual perceived presence
of the predator. The call can only mean; there is a leopard nearby, run up the nearest
tree! Words on the other hand can be used in various ways, such as to question: Is there
a leopard? Is that a leopard I see before me? There are many possibilities including,
saying “leopard” when there is no leopard. The vervet alarm call lacks this flexibility.
It is the equivalent to pointing, which is meaningless in the absence of the referenced
object.
This level of language has an innate component. Vervets are born able to make
the range of calls, but immature monkeys have to learn how and, critically, when to make
such calls. Adult vervets can usually tell when youngsters have got it wrong, which is just
as well, otherwise the learning process would be fairly tedious for the troupe or indeed
dangerous—along the principles of the story of the boy who cried “wolf.” The fact that
some adult vervets have been observed making alarm calls when no predator was around
with the obvious (to the watching scientists sweating in the nearby hide) intention of
getting other vervets to run away. The fact that this works shows just how compulsive
the response is. An escalation of this behavior would have disastrous consequences for
a vervet troupe and would in the long run invalidate the purpose of the alarm call in the
first place. Presumably such deceptive behavior is kept to a minimum.