I understood our book to say that human language builds on itself and animal communicate does not build on itself. This is one of the big differences that I noticed between human language and animal communication. I understand from our book on pages 13 and 14 that Honeybees communicated the distance and location of the food, but in the experiment, they always used one of three ways to “dance” their information. On page 14, they further explain that in this communication that the bees cannot build on that information by saying things such as “Beware of the lawnmower” or I was feeling tired so I may be off on the timing.” However, with humans we want to know how to do the build up. We want to know and can communicate the “who, what, when, where, why, and how.” Animals may understand a few phrases here and there of their owner’s language but they cannot respond back in speech. Animals have communication of some sort amongst themselves but there is no proof that the communication builds as it does with humans. The following statements are paraphrasing pages 18 and 19 in our book: Humans learn from one another and most animals do not learn from one another. Human’s language is ambiguous and most animal’s communication is not. Human language is creative and most animal’s are not. So to answer you question, animals have some communication skills but have limited knowledge, and understanding of humans’ speech.
I have to tell you, I have had dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, bunny rabbits, and fish here and there during my lifetime and not one of them were able to talk to me and tell me their feelings, or the who, what, when, where, why, or how of anything. Some of them understood my simple commands but that was about all. I wish the animals could have a deeper understanding of language, because then I might have been able to save my favorite cat that I had years ago, because I would have known that he needed to go to the doctor sooner and it could have saved his...