question: Why can't we understand animals?
comment: Well we can. If you look for information you will see that we know a lot about dog's communication. There is two problems that we face. & #x200B; 1) Animals communicate, but don't have a language. A language is precise, but communication is messy. Try communicate with someone without using language, you have far less diversity in the mean you have and that make your communication more limited and less complex than if you would use a language. & #x200B; 2) We need to observe the communications to understand it. It's easy to do with a dog, far less to do with dolphin, so of course we understand a lot less about Dolphin communication vs Dog communication.
passages: 5. "Animals as subjects". One of the most difficult aspects of studying animals is the fact that they can't talk back to us in human language. Animal geographers have been tackling how, exactly, to address the fact that individuals of other species are experiential entities. Examples include work by Barua on elephants, Bear on fish, Hinchliffe et al. on water voles, and Lorimer on nonhuman charisma. Geographers are also contending with how to reconstruct the lives of animal subjects in the past, how these lives may be resurrected from the historical record, and how spatially situated human-animal relations have changed through time.
   BULLET::::- Apes and monkeys are able to adapt behavioral patterns quite quickly. The hundredth monkey effect is based on this phenomenon. The downside of their talent for mimicry is that people see monkeys as dumb creatures who imitate everything without actually understanding what they are doing, even foolish or dangerous behaviour. The metaphor infinite monkey theorem and the idiom "monkey see, monkey do" are based on this idea.
  
  Section::::Common Western animal stereotypes.:Mammals.:Skunks.
  
  BULLET::::- The smelly skunk
   In 2007, Penn and Povinelli wrote "there is still little consensus on whether or not nonhuman animals understand anything about unobservable mental states or even what it would mean for a non-verbal animal to understand the concept of a 'mental state'." They went on further to suggest that ToM was ""any" cognitive system, whether theory-like or not, that predicts or explains the behaviour of another agent by postulating that unobservable inner states particular to the cognitive perspective of that agent causally modulate that agent's behaviour".
   "Our acquaintance with the mind of animals rests upon the same basis as our acquaintance with the mind of our fellow man: both are derived by inference from observed behavior. The actions of our fellow man resemble our own, and we therefore infer in them like subjective states to ours: the actions of animals resemble ours less completely, but the difference is one of degree, not of kind... We know not where consciousness begins in the animal world. We know where it surely resides—in ourselves; we know where it exists beyond a reasonable doubt—in those animals of structure resembling ours which rapidly adapt themselves to the lessons of experience. Beyond this point, for all we know, it may exist in simpler and simpler forms until we reach the very lowest of living beings." 
   Anthrozoology scholars, such as Pauleen Bennett recognize the lack of scholarly attention given to non-human animals in the past, and to the relationships between human and non-human animals, especially in the light of the magnitude of animal representations, symbols, stories and their actual physical presence in human societies. Rather than a unified approach, the field currently consists of several methods adapted from the several participating disciplines to encompass human-nonhuman animal relationships and occasional efforts to develop "sui generis" methods.
  
  Section::::Areas of study.
  
  BULLET::::- The interaction and enhancement within captive animal interactions.
   BULLET::::- Other examples: Owl in "Winnie the Pooh", Oehoeboeroe in "Paulus the woodgnome", Owl in "The Animals of Farthing Wood", Owl in Guardians of Ga'Hoole, Owl in Bambi, Meneer de Uil in "De Fabeltjeskrant", Archimedes in "The Sword in the Stone", Kaepora Geabora ("The Legend of Zelda")
   BULLET::::- Much like any other large mammal, hippos tend to be stereotyped as not possessing much intelligence.
  
  BULLET::::- Example: Mayor Dirk Dickerdack in "Tom Poes", Pat in "Pat & Stan", Dolph the Fascist Hippo, Hip-Hip (a detective who is both clumsy and competent at the same time).
  
  Section::::Common Western animal stereotypes.:Mammals.:Horses.
  
  BULLET::::- The noble, brave, faithful, strong, fast horse
   Animals Are Like That
  
  Animals Are Like That! was Frank Buck’s sixth book, which continued his stories of capturing exotic animals.
  
  If you should find yourself with a monkey or ape on your hands and no knowledge of what to do with it, Buck tells co-author Carol Weld, just treat it like a child. And the elephant, like a man in the tropics, needs a sheltered siesta in mid-afternoon because he is susceptible to sunstroke. Monkeys pick up human ways and copy them. But you should never, never trust a tiger, any more than you should trust a crocodile.
   Behavioral disorders are difficult to study in animal models because it is difficult to know what animals are thinking and because animal models used to assess psychopathologies are experimental preparations developed to study a condition. Can a monkey effectively communicate that he is sad or that he feels overwhelmed? Lacking the ability to use language to study behavioral disorders like depression and stress questions the validity of those studies conducted. It can be difficult to attribute human afflictions to non-human animals.
  
  Section::::Behavioral disorders.:Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
   BULLET::::- The cute little goat
  
  BULLET::::- Just like sheep there have been portrayals of goats as cute, cuddly little creatures too.
  
  BULLET::::- Examples: The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, The Goat and Her Three Kids, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Koziołek Matołek, Biquette in "Johan and Peewit", The Pet Goat
  
  Section::::Common Western animal stereotypes.:Mammals.:Hippopotamuses.
  
  BULLET::::- The female hippopotamus who acts like an obese human female
   In "Animals in Translation", Grandin's explains her theory of why people with autism and animals are so similar. Grandin's theory is that the frontal lobes of people with autism do not function the same as those of typical person, and the brain function of a person with autism falls "between human and animal". Grandin goes on to explain that typical people are good at seeing the "big picture", people with autism are more detail oriented. Grandin's sensitivity to details has allowed her to see things that humans have been doing to animals for years that are "traumatizing" them, even maintaining a list of "18 tiny details that scare farm animals". The list includes things such as reflections on smooth metal, jiggling chains, and one-way gates.
   Some researchers have made effective use of a Piagetian methodology, taking tasks which human children are known to master at different stages of development, and investigating which of them can be performed by particular species. Others have been inspired by concerns for animal welfare and the management of domestic species: for example Temple Grandin has harnessed her unique expertise in animal welfare and the ethical treatment of farm livestock to highlight underlying similarities between humans and other animals. From a methodological point of view, one of the main risks in this sort of work is anthropomorphism, the tendency to interpret an animal's behavior in terms of human feelings, thoughts, and motivations.
   Section::::Contributions.
  
  BULLET::::- "Rethinking the Human-Animal Divide in the Anthropocene", Manuel Arias-Maldonado
   BULLET::::- The Dutch word for mnemonic is "ezelsbruggetje", literally "donkey bridge".
  
  BULLET::::- In Dutch, the word "ezel" is also used as an insult, denoting dumb or stubborn people.
   Section::::Summary.:Applied epistemology.:3. "Of the reason of animals (comparable to man)".
   In Despret’s writings, what is peculiar is the methodological approach and her anecdotal and idiosyncratic style: the author chooses to tell stories about animals (or, better, stories of relationship among animals, humans included) rather than to write about animals.
  
  Focal point to the authors is "asking the right questions" to non-human animals. This means that animals are not texts to hermeneutically interpret, not object to quest via scientific experiments, but they are subjects able to provide their own answers to the questions interesting to them.
   BULLET::::- Goats are usually anthropomorphized as old men with a goatee.
  
  BULLET::::- Examples: Old Doc Yak, Professor Sickbock ("Tom Poes"), Koziołek Matołek, Billy, Bob, and Pete in "".
  
  BULLET::::- The scapegoat.
   Section::::Relation to laboratory experimental psychology.
  
  Traditionally, cognitive ethologists have questioned research methods that isolate animals in unnatural surroundings and present them with a limited set of artificial stimuli, arguing that such techniques favor the study of artificial issues that are not relevant to an understanding of the natural behavior of animals. However, many modern researchers favor a judicious combination of field and laboratory methods.
  
  Section::::Relation to ethics.
   Birds have been a strong study subject on the topic of culture due to their observed vocal "dialects" similar to those studied in the cetaceans. These dialects were first discovered by zoologist Peter Marler, who noted the geographic variation in the songs of various songbirds. Many scientists have found that, in attempting to study these animals, they approach a stumbling block in that it is difficult to understand these animals' societies due to their being so different from our own. This makes it difficult to understand the animals' behaviors, let alone determine whether they are cultural or simply practical.
   Evidence for emotions in animals has been primarily anecdotal, from individuals who interact with pets or captive animals on a regular basis. However, critics of animals having emotions often suggest that anthropomorphism is a motivating factor in the interpretation of the observed behaviours. Much of the debate is caused by the difficulty in defining emotions and the cognitive requirements thought necessary for animals to experience emotions in a similar way to humans. The problem is made more problematic by the difficulties in testing for emotions in animals. What is known about human emotion is almost all related or in relation to human communication.
   In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development.
  
  In other words, Morgan believed that anthropomorphic approaches to animal behavior were fallacious, and that people should only consider behaviour as, for example, rational, purposive or affectionate, if there is no other explanation in terms of the behaviours of more primitive life-forms to which we do not attribute those faculties.
  
  Section::::Historical background.:From anecdote to laboratory.
   Animals in Translation
  
  Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior is a 2005 book by Temple Grandin and co-written by Catherine Johnson. "Animals in Translation" explores the similarity between animals and people with autism, a concept that was originally touched upon in Grandin's 1995 book "Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism".
  
  Section::::Background.
   BULLET::::- Cultural diversity is also important. From a cultural transmission standpoint, humans are the only animals to pass down cumulative cultural knowledge to their offspring. While chimpanzees can learn to use tools by watching other chimps around them, but humans are able to pool their cognitive resources to create increasingly more complex solutions to problems and more complex ways of interacting with their environments.
   Before one can get started observing wildlife and helping the environment, it is important to research the animal they are choosing to observe. If one simply went into the observation process and skipped the crucial process of obtaining knowledge about the animals, it would be difficult for them to determine if anything was out of the ordinary. Before observing, it would be wise to find out simple information about the animal such as:
  
  BULLET::::- What the animal eats - Is the animal a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore?
  
  BULLET::::- What animals prey on the animal?
  
  BULLET::::- Where does the animal live?
   The Alpenzoo has an educational department that offers experimental teaching with animals for groups of all ages. The professional hire to teach are both teachers and biologists.
  
presuppositions: We can't understand animals. Humans are unable to understand animals.
corrections: Animals can't communicate by language, but they can through other ways. Humans are able to understand animals, though there are barriers to such understanding.
raw_presuppositions: We can't understand animals. Humans are unable to understand animals.
raw_corrections: Animals can't communicate by language, but they can through other ways. Humans are able to understand animals, though there are barriers to such understanding.