Animals do not communicate spontaneously

A. Initiation. Chimpanzees do not usually initiate a conversation, except to indicate what they want and within a narrow range of activities, such as eating. Washoe’s comment on the swan was a once-off surprise.

B. Parrots. Irene Pepperberg (professor of psychology at Brandeis) has trained an African grey parrot named Alex since the late 1970s to answer such questions as “What object is green and three-cornered?,” to count things up to six, to ask for food in such sentences as “Want a nut,” and even to put names to sounds. Once, asking for a nut each time after being asked questions to name sounds, he slit his eyes and said, “Want a nut—nn, uh, tuh.”

1. But language is largely a trick to Alex: asked what color something is, he will often give every color but the right one, showing intelligence but not a sense of language as communication rather than trick.

2. He also answers questions with only 80 percent accuracy, because he gets bored; language is a game, not a mode of expression.

C. In nature, in the lab. No apes sign in the wild; no parrots communicate in the wild.