--- title: How animals talk — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «How animals talk», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Animals do not speak words like us, but they send each other messages all the time with sounds, dances, smells, light and the way they hold their bodies. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / How animals talk # How animals talk Lesson 50 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/50-how-animals-talk/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/0/) — Animals do not speak words like us, but they send each other messages all the time with sounds, dances, smells, light and the way they hold their bodies. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/1/) — A honeybee that has found flowers dances a figure of eight on the comb, and the angle and length of her waggle tell her sisters which way to fly and how far, a map made of movement. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/2/) — Your cat meowing at the fridge door is talking to you, not to other cats: adult cats rarely meow to each other, so the meow is a language cats invented for people. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/3/) — Cartoon animals chat in full sentences and every dog with a wagging tail is happy; real messages are simpler but cleverer, and a stiff, high, fast wag can mean a dog is tense, so ask the owner before you touch. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/4/) — A honeybee forager dances a figure of eight on the comb; the direction of the waggle run shows the angle of the flowers from the Sun and its length shows the distance, worked out by Karl von Frisch, who shared a Nobel Prize in 1973. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/5/) — Vervet monkeys have different alarm calls for leopards, eagles and snakes: at the leopard call they run up trees, at the eagle call they dive into bushes, and at the snake call they stand and look at the ground, because each predator attacks in a different way; young vervets sometimes call at harmless birds and learn the right use from adults over time. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/6/) — Prairie dogs give alarm calls that seem to change for different predators, and some studies suggest they carry details such as size or colour, though scientists still argue how much. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/7/) — A loose, wide tail wag is usually friendly, but a stiff, high, fast wag can mean a dog is tense; dogs talk with their whole body, ears, tail, hackles, mouth and how they stand. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/8/) — Adult cats rarely meow to each other: meowing is mostly how cats talk to people, and cats purr when content but sometimes also when hurt or unwell. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/9/) — Male humpback whales sing long songs of repeated themes for hours; males in one region sing nearly the same song, and new songs can spread across the Pacific over a few years. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/10/) — Elephants make deep rumbles, many too low for us to hear, called infrasound, which carry several kilometres and may be felt through their feet and trunk; an elephant may stand still with its ears spread out to listen for them. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/11/) — In spring male songbirds such as blackbirds sing at dawn to claim territory and be noticed, and young birds learn their songs by listening and practising, much like a baby learning to talk. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/12/) — Ants that find food lay a scent trail of chemicals called pheromones on the way home, and other ants smell it with their antennae and follow it. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/13/) — Fireflies are beetles that make cold light in their tails; each kind has its own flash code, and some females copy another kind's code to lure males and eat them. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/14/) — An African grey parrot named Alex, studied by Irene Pepperberg for 30 years, could name dozens of objects, colours and shapes and count up to six, though most talking parrots just copy sounds. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/50-how-animals-talk/15/) — Each bottlenose dolphin has its own signature whistle, a bit like a name, which others can copy to call it, and dolphins seem to remember old companions' whistles for 20 years or more. - ← previous: [Babies: eggs, live birth, pouches and parents](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/49-babies/) - next →: [How animals hide: camouflage and mimicry](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/51-how-animals-hide/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)