This is actually what this community is about. And, so far as I can tell, it really depends on how you define language. Possibly the most decoded natural animal language so far is that of prairie dogs. They have managed to identify sounds that represent nouns, verbs, and adjectives. When you change the color of the shirt of an approaching person, a predictable unit of the prairie dog call changes. They have even found that they have unique sounds for abstract shapes like rectangle and circle, which is especially intriguing since these are the sorts of things that they wouldn’t often come across in nature.
It is true, however, that prairie dogs are doing little more than just labeling. For the more advanced cognitive stuff we need to look at examples such as Koko the gorilla, while we were not able to decode much of a natural gorilla language, Koko did show that she was able to use English at the level of a small child. What she was capable of was way beyond simply labeling. For example, Koko used English sign language to blame a human assistant for breaking the sink in living quarters. She also was able to tell jokes and laugh about them, indicating that she understood what a sense of humor is.
We are probably still a long way from decoding the most advanced non-human communication systems on the planet. The ways that some dolphins combine uniquely identifiable syllables would put the most advanced human beatbocers to shame. While humans generally combine syllables one after the other, dolphins do this while simultaneously combining syllables on top of each other. They have demonstrated abilities as advanced as devising and coordinating a unique, non-rehearsed action between two dolphins after being asked to do so by a human. They both received the command from the human, went underwater, and then returned to perform an agreed upon action together, one which they had neither ever done before.
With advances in machine learning, we may just be very surprised by what we discover is being communicated between the other animals we share the planet with.
This is actually what this community is about. And, so far as I can tell, it really depends on how you define language. Possibly the most decoded natural animal language so far is that of prairie dogs. They have managed to identify sounds that represent nouns, verbs, and adjectives. When you change the color of the shirt of an approaching person, a predictable unit of the prairie dog call changes. They have even found that they have unique sounds for abstract shapes like rectangle and circle, which is especially intriguing since these are the sorts of things that they wouldn’t often come across in nature.
It is true, however, that prairie dogs are doing little more than just labeling. For the more advanced cognitive stuff we need to look at examples such as Koko the gorilla, while we were not able to decode much of a natural gorilla language, Koko did show that she was able to use English at the level of a small child. What she was capable of was way beyond simply labeling. For example, Koko used English sign language to blame a human assistant for breaking the sink in living quarters. She also was able to tell jokes and laugh about them, indicating that she understood what a sense of humor is.
We are probably still a long way from decoding the most advanced non-human communication systems on the planet. The ways that some dolphins combine uniquely identifiable syllables would put the most advanced human beatbocers to shame. While humans generally combine syllables one after the other, dolphins do this while simultaneously combining syllables on top of each other. They have demonstrated abilities as advanced as devising and coordinating a unique, non-rehearsed action between two dolphins after being asked to do so by a human. They both received the command from the human, went underwater, and then returned to perform an agreed upon action together, one which they had neither ever done before.
With advances in machine learning, we may just be very surprised by what we discover is being communicated between the other animals we share the planet with.