write an essay on if animals could talk
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Answer:
PLEASE MARK ME AS BRAINLIEST...
One century ago in the 1915 trenches of World War I, a young engineer named Hugh Lofting was moved by the sufferings of innocent horses and mules drafted into the horrifying vortex of human destruction. Needing something to say in letters home to his small children, he invented a certain doctor to minister to the beasts. This remarkable man could, Lofting explained to his children, talk with animals. He would name his doctor “Dolittle” and place him in Victorian England amidst all that period’s rich discoveries of the living world.
The last century has been the worst in history for relations among humans and between humans and non-human animals. Perhaps we might look ourselves in the mirror and ask whether we should still aspire to talk to the animals—who doesn’t share Lofting’s dream?—or whether we should aspire instead to turn down our chatter and do a better job of listening to what animals need us to hear.
The 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, “If a lion could talk, we wouldn’t be able to understand it.” He implied that lions inhabit a world unintelligibly different. Yet if a lion could talk, he’d likely bore us with the mundane: the waterhole, the warthogs, wildebeest ad nauseum. Lions’ concerns—food, mates, children, and safety—are our concerns. After all, humans are animals.
Millions of species communicate using body language and instinctive calls. Humans have instinctive calls, too—our distress scream, laughter, crying. Additionally, humans have a brain template for acquiring language. Onto this template we learn Italian, Malagasy, and so on. Chimpanzees can learn to sign things like, “Give me apple” (apes cannot form human-like sounds). But extensive vocabulary with grammar and syntax appears unique to humans. Complex language allows storytelling. Not simply a monkey or bird’s present-tense, “Danger! Snake!” but a human’s ability to convey, “I saw a snake there yesterday; be careful.”
The implications are unsettling. Perhaps we are as truly, deeply, and constitutionally incapable of understanding the richness that other species perceive in their own communications as they are incapable of understanding human conversation. What if their communication modalities are borders we can smudge but never truly cross? “Talking with the animals” may be impossible.
And yet. There’s a little more to it. Orangutans sometimes pantomime what they would like from a human. When the human seems to partially understand their meaning, orangutans repeat gestures. But when misunderstood, an orangutan tries new signals. Asked to find an object that isn’t in their pool, dolphins and sea lions either look extra hard or don’t bother looking. They know that what they’re looking for, and understand whether it’s there. Dolphins can understand the difference between, “Get the ring from John and give it to Susan,” and “Get the ring from Susan and give it to John.” They understand that order can change meaning; that’s syntax—the hallmark of human language.
African elephants have one particular alarm that appears to be their word for, “Bees!” A friend of mine saw impalas run away when they heard elephants scream at a pack of wild dogs; her guide said that impalas never run when elephants are screaming at people or each other. That means elephants say some specific things that impalas understand. Baby elephants have two very different “words” expressing contentment or annoyance. They respond to being comforted by going, , and to being annoyed—pushed, tusked, kicked, or denied their mother’s breast—by going, various. Certain rumbles by mothers have the immediate effect of bringing a wandering baby back to her side. It seems fair to interpret them as saying, “Come here.”
Vervet monkey use calls with distinct meanings. In other words: words. If a dangerous cat is detected, the alarm sends everyone up a tree. When a dangerous eagle flies over, the monkeys’ alarm call causes other monkeys to look up and run into ground-cover (not up a tree). They don’t utter alarms for eagle species that don’t prey on monkeys. A monkey who sees a dangerous snake gives a ‘chuttering’ call that causes other vervets to stand up, scanning the ground for the snake. All told, vervets have words meaning ‘leopard’, ‘eagle’, ‘snake’, ‘baboon’, ‘other predatory mammal’, ‘unfamiliar human’, ‘dominant monkey’, ‘subordinate monkey’, ‘watch other monkey’, and ‘rival troop’.
Perhaps the Dolittle dilemma has been miscast. Maybe instead of wanting to learn to talk to the animals, our greater need is to quiet down and learn to listen....
Explanation:
if animal could speak ,they would inform you when they are in pain,instead of silently suffering.they would tell you what foods they prefare,how they feel during the day and they would tell you if you are annoying them animal could say "I love you"to their owner many times.wild animals would be more easy to study on since they will say humanwords,we wont really have to study on their body language.
sadly,I dont think animals are gonna talk any time soon. thats why its important to learn your animal body language soyou know how they are feeling and if they are in pain.