Animal Communication Theory

A valuable overview and analysis of foundational concepts in animal behaviour studies, including information, meaning, communication, signals and cues. Its comprehensive introduction and numerous illustrations will make it accessible to students and researchers from a wide variety of academic backgrounds, ranging from ethology and evolutionary biology to philosophy of mind.

The explanation of animal communication by means of concepts like information, meaning and reference is one of the central foundational issues in animal behaviour studies. This book explores these issues, revolving around questions such as: • What is the nature of information? • What theoretical roles does information play in animal communication studies? • Is it justified to employ these concepts in order to explain animal communication? • What is the relation between animal signals and human language? The book approaches the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including ethology, animal cognition, theoretical biology and evolutionary biology, as well as philosophy of biology and mind. A comprehensive introduction familiarises non-specialists with the field and leads on to chapters ranging from philosophical and theoretical analyses to case studies involving primates, birds and insects. The resulting survey of new and established concepts and methodologies will guide future empirical and theoretical research.

An exploration of key concepts in the study of animal communication, covering case studies as well as more theoretical issues. The book approaches the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including ethology, animal cognition, theoretical biology and evolutionary biology, as well as philosophy of biology and mind. A comprehensive introduction familiarises non-specialists with the field and leads on to chapters ranging from philosophical and theoretical analyses to case studies involving primates, birds and insects. The resulting survey of new and established concepts and methodologies will guide future empirical and theoretical research.

Gull chicks beg for food from their parents. Peacocks spread their tails to attract potential mates. Meerkats alert family members of the approach of predators. But are these--and other animals--sometimes dishonest? That's what William Searcy and Stephen Nowicki ask in The Evolution of Animal Communication. They take on the fascinating yet perplexing question of the dependability of animal signaling systems. The book probes such phenomena as the begging of nesting birds, alarm calls in squirrels and primates, carotenoid coloration in fish and birds, the calls of frogs and toads, and weapon displays in crustaceans. Do these signals convey accurate information about the signaler, its future behavior, or its environment? Or do they mislead receivers in a way that benefits the signaler? For example, is the begging chick really hungry as its cries indicate or is it lobbying to get more food than its brothers and sisters? Searcy and Nowicki take on these and other questions by developing clear definitions of key issues, by reviewing the most relevant empirical data and game theory models available, and by asking how well theory matches data. They find that animal communication is largely reliable--but that this basic reliability also allows the clever deceiver to flourish. Well researched and clearly written, their book provides new insight into animal communication, behavior, and evolution.

This book represents early and prominent forays into the subject of human-animal communication from a Communication Studies perspectives, an effort that brings a discipline too long defined by that fallacy of division, human or nonhuman, into conversation with animal studies, biosemiotics, and environmental communication, as well as other recent intellectual and activist movements for reconceptualizing relationships and interactions in the biosphere.

This book explores the strikingly similar ways in which information is encoded in nonverbal man-made signals (e.g., traffic lights and tornado sirens) and animal-evolved signals (e.g., color patterns and vocalizations). The book also considers some coding principles for reducing certain unwanted redundancies and explains how desirable redundancies enhance communication reliability. Jack Hailman believes this work pioneers several aspects of analyzing human and animal communication. The book is the first to survey man-made signals as a class. It is also the first to compare such human-devised systems with signaling in animals by showing the highly similar ways in which the two encode information. A third innovation is generalizing principles of quantitative information theory to apply to a broad range of signaling systems. Finally, another first is distinguishing among types of redundancy and their separation into unwanted and desirable categories. This remarkably novel book will be of interest to a wide readership. Appealing not only to specialists in semiotics, animal behavior, psychology, and allied fields but also to general readers, it serves as an introduction to animal signaling and to an important class of human communication.

The study of animal communication has led to significant progress in our general understanding of motor and sensory systems, evolution, and speciation. However, one often neglected aspect is that signal exchange in every modality is constrained by noise, be it in the transmission channel or in the nervous system. This book analyses whether and how animals can cope with such constraints, and explores the implications that noise has for our understanding of animal communication. It is written by leading biologists working on different taxa including insects, fish, amphibians, lizards, birds, and mammals. In addition to this broad taxonomic approach, the chapters also cover a wide array of research disciplines: from the mechanisms of signal production and perception, to the behavioural ecology of signalling, the evolution of animal communication, and conservation issues. This volume promotes the integration of the knowledge gained by the diverse approaches to the study of animal communication and, at the same time, highlights particularly interesting fields of current and future research.

Most animal communication has evolved and now takes place in the context of a communication network, i.e. several signallers and receivers within communication range of each other. This idea follows naturally from the observation that many signals travel further than the average spacing between animals. This is self evidently true for long-range signals, but at a high density the same is true for short-range signals (e.g. begging calls of nestling birds). This book provides a current summary of research on communication networks and appraises future prospects. It combines information from studies of several taxonomic groups (insects to people via fiddler crabs, fish, frogs, birds and mammals) and several signalling modalities (visual, acoustic and chemical signals). It also specifically addresses the many areas of interface between communication networks and other disciplines (from the evolution of human charitable behaviour to the psychophysics of signal perception, via social behaviour, physiology and mathematical models).