Is the relationship between animals of different species ‘understand’ and communicate with one another or is it like us where we can only can gauge off of behaviour, body language etc.?
In: Biology
Animals don’t have language the way that humans do. Their calls can carry meaning. Sometimes surprisingly specific meaning, but they’re not really “talking” to each other (with a few possible exceptions, though even there with demonstrably less complexity than human language).
For most animals, vocalizations are going to communicate things on a similar level to body language. Growls, yelps, hisses, etc. And animals can, to some extent, interpret those. A lot of them, especially warnings, are specifically meant to be understandable as, e.g., threats even across species.
But for the most part, animals aren’t communicating super complex ideas to even other members of their own species, and in the cases where they do, other animals are unlikely to be very good at deciphering the specifics with the possible exception of another species that co-evolved with to be good at understanding (in the way that dogs are remarkably good at picking up human language, for example).
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