Transcription
A few days ago, I came across a very interesting video about animal linguistics, or specifically bird linguistics, by Professor Toshitaka Suzuki. He's the first person in the world to provide conclusive evidence that birds use language to communicate between themselves.
Now, when you hear this, you might think, "Oh, that's obvious. I thought we always knew that animals talked." And to be fair, that's often portrayed to be the case in digital media. But from a scientific standpoint, that's never been the case. Traditionally, animal sounds were thought to reflect emotion, not meaning. So, things like fear, hunger, courtship—more natural responses rather than an active means to express something specific like we do with our words.
It's been this way since the days of Aristotle, who argued that only humans were capable of complex speech. And this idea has persisted even to recent publications. And even if you look at biology books nowadays, you'll find that many note that animals are able to make noises for things like mating or hunger, but none talk about the actual language and linguistics behind it. The idea that language is specific, targeted, and refers to the world around us is very different to noise that is expressing something. And from that perspective, Professor Suzuki is the first person to provide evidence of this through years of meticulous experiments.
He spent 20 years studying a species of birds known as the Japanese tit. For simplicity, I'll just call it the tit bird or the bird throughout this video. And he proves that birds are really using language quite similar to us to communicate as well. And his findings prove that the tit don't only use words or noise to communicate, but instead use sentences. And these sentences need to have the right grammar in order for them to be understood and convey the right meaning. As an example, in English, "dog bites man" versus "man bites dog" conveys two completely different things.
Now, all this is very novel, but most people at this point would probably be a little bit skeptical about how he actually proves this. So, let's take a step back and introduce how all of this even began.
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Suzuki says he's always been fascinated by the way nature speaks. As a child, he's listened to birds outside his window and always felt like they were communicating something more. Uh, on his lab profile online, he proudly claims, "In high school, I acquired binoculars and became deeply interested in bird watching, which eventually led me to study the cause of the Japanese tit universities." For me, it began all with a simple question: Why do the tits produce so many different calls? And at first, he didn't pay too much attention to it, but his natural curiosity and eye for detail soon led him to realize that these calls were far from random and were often distinct from one another.
So, let's take a quick look at a few examples of their calls that we'll take a deeper look at in this video. And just pay attention to how different they are from one another. That first sound you heard is the sound a tit bird makes in order to attract a mate. And keep in mind there's going to be a lot of onomatopoeia in this video to try and reproduce the sound of the birds. It also doesn't help that the original video and book that Suzuki writes all use the Japanese onomatopoeia. So I'll do my best to translate.
But after his graduation, Suzuki decides to dive deeper into really finding out more about these birds. And he decides to conduct his studies in the region of Mount Asama, which is a beautiful, lush area in the Nagano region. And it's the natural habitat for not only the Japanese tit, but many other animals as well. And to observe the tit bird in closer detail, he creates a number of birdhouses with a camera inside and then stores them all across the forest, which allows him to observe their daily life closely. And he ends up spending the majority of his time every year paying close attention to the lives of these birds.
In the forest, he finds these birds have a lot of natural predators like crows, wild cats, and even small bears. And one of their most dangerous predators is the Japanese rat snake because unlike their other predators, it can invade nest holes and attack their young or when they're resting.
So now let's take a look at some of his findings. On June 10th, 2008, while Suzuki was recording birds, he notices a call he has never heard before. Pay close attention to this sound. This really confused him because remember, at this point, he has spent years observing these birds every single day, but he had never heard this call before. So he couldn't help but wonder what was going on. And when he paid closer attention, he noticed that next to the bird that was making the "jar" sound, there was a snake that was slowly crawling on the ground nearby.
And at first, he thought maybe it was an alert call that the Japanese tit makes when there's a predator nearby. And he decided to test this by conducting an experiment where he would introduce different predators near the nest. And what he found was that when crows, wild cats, or other predators were nearby, they usually made this sound: "Pittsby." He wasn't sure of at the time, but he later finds out that this is the general alert call to indicate to other birds that there is a predator nearby. But going back to the story, when a snake was close, every time they made the "jar" sound. And he thought to himself, "Now, this is really interesting, but it's still quite far from conclusive evidence that 'jar' necessarily means snake."
So, he records the various alert calls and plays them through a speaker to observe how they would react. He was excited by his findings so far, but he knew that he needed to be even more meticulous with his experiments to really show if it was true. For example, "jar" could just refer to be alert for predators on the ground rather than specifically referring to a snake.
So, he takes his experiment one step further. He thinks of a way to test his theory via something called mental image or mental misidentification. And this experiment is often used on humans to show that words have an effect on how we see things. So, first take a look at this image. If I told you this resembled a dog, your mind will naturally associate the image with that of a dog facing left. Whilst if I told you this was a cat, you likely imagine an image of a cat facing right. So if the Japanese tit here is "jaja" and then misidentifies something for a snake, then we can conclude that the word "jaja" refers to snake.
So to try this, he designed an experiment where he first plays the "jar" sound through a speaker to try signal there is a snake nearby. He then ties a rope to a stick and slowly drags it up the tree to replicate the movement of how snakes usually climb up the tree. And the plan is to see whether the tit bird will try to approach the stick and verify if it's a snake or not. Here is a live clip of one of the experiments. You can see when the "jar" sound is played, the bird doesn't just react randomly. It specifically approaches the tree branch in search for something that looks like a snake. In this case, the stick. That shows it formed a mental image of what the sound refers to and tried to look for things that most closely resembled its mental image of a snake.
Over the next four years, he tries different iterations of this experiment where instead of the "jar" sound, he uses the general alarm sound "Pittsby" or changes how the stick moves and finally concludes after four long years that animals don't just have emotions, but are able to properly indicate objects and "ja" does in fact mean snake in the same way that we use words and nouns in human language.
As Professor Suzuki continues his research, he finds that birds can even combine words to form sentences and that these sentences actually have similarities and complexities in syntax or grammar just like we do with our own sentences. And one of the words he notices is frequently used in sentences is the "Pittsby" sound. And he finds that the tits make this noise when they sense some kind of danger. In other words, it's an alert call. The second sound that they often make is this sound here: "G G G," almost like a shaker. And this sound is used to call its friends over, almost like a gather command. They often use this as a way to call for help or to tell their friends to come over for food in the area.
And he soon notices that the "Pittsby" and "GGG" calls are often used together and it sounds something like this. So, why are they doing that? Well, if you look closely, you'll notice that in the middle of the video, there's a larger bird. It's a bit hard to see, but it looks a little bit like a shrike. And Suzuki comments that this is a carnivorous bird that is commonly seen around the area. And when they're alone, the tits have no chance of winning one-on-one. But in groups, they can fend off and even chase away the predator. So he makes the guess that in this context, the command "pits" plus "GGG" simply means "be on alert and gather together."
So he records this cry and first he plays it around different speakers in the forest and sure enough, he notices that the tit birds do indeed respond and approach the speaker and they begin to look around for signs of danger. Uh, it's clear they tell themselves there's something suspicious out there, but they can't quite figure out what it is yet. And he does this hundreds of times, right? So it's it's quite funny. All the poor birds that fly around the forest thinking that their friends are in need of help and need to get there and find nothing but a speaker.
Anyway, he thinks to himself, "Okay, why don't we take this one step further?" And he designs an experiment where he places a model of a shrike on a nearby branch before he plays the recording: "Pittsby GGG." And sure enough, you can see the tit birds flying close and flapping their wings to try and scare the shrike away. And before long, you can see that more and more of its friends gather around to try and scare the shrike away. So he concludes from this that the combination of "pitsby gigg" means "alert and gather together."
But then he has another thought. So with the power of editing, he tests this idea. He does an experiment where he plays the two calls this time in reverse: "GGG Pittsby." This time, even though there were tit birds near the speaker, none of them try to come closer and scare away the shrike. So this is pretty amazing. It provides conclusive evidence that birds are indeed using language and words to communicate and on top of that, there is depth to this communication in the form of grammar.
Once he discovers this, he mentions that he was pretty excited at the time. But as he continues his research, he quickly realizes something: that this is a huge discovery for humans, but it might actually be very natural in the world of birds because he notices that the tree sparrows, who also live in the same region as the Japanese tits, have always seemed to understand the cries from the tits and may even use it as a cautionary warning for nearby predators.
What you see here is footage that Suzuki took of a park in Tokyo. And you can see that first the sparrows on the ground looking for food. Uh, first he plays "GGG," meaning "gather," which does not signal any danger, and there's no response from the sparrows. Next, he plays the recording "Pitts," and he now he has the word for hawk, and the effect is almost instantaneous with the sparrows taking flight into the trees. So, in other words, birds or animals are able to communicate amongst themselves.
>> At the end of one of his presentations, Professor Suki poses the question: If animals can communicate amongst themselves, will there be a future where we will also be able to communicate directly with animals? He believes that we can. He goes one step further to suggest that what's needed to do this is not AI or other technologies, but rather the most important thing is a curious mind and to really pay attention to the world around us. He says that humans have assumed for over 2,000 years that we are the only ones with language and as a result, we have become both complacent and ignorant to the world around us. He ponders if one day our ancestors were able to understand the languages of other animals. And he hopes to further the field of study for animal linguistics in the future. Finally, he encourages each of us to really observe our animal companions around us and to understand what they're thinking and saying.
Thanks for watching and if you enjoyed this one, don't forget to like, [music] subscribe, and I'll catch you in the next video. >> [music]