I remember watching a show on chimps, and a scientist said she was in her office and heard screaming and she thought it must be dinner time and she was right. From this she was able to determine that chimps have different screams for different things and that it just isn’t them being excited but actually a language albeit a simple one.
actually all animals have a lot of language, a lot of it is body language, eye contact or not, ears, tails, they’re pretty much comunicating all the time. they talk to us too, but most people miss it because it’s not what we are attuned to read.Ask any good horseperson. I would say my horse says “Um, this is good!” “Thank you”. “Come back, I’m scared!” “Hi, how’s it going?” “I’m allright”-— a number of rumbles in the belly, looks, nuzzles, etc. Ears pointing in a lot of directions, all mean something— pawing, tail swishing, teeth grinding, position of the head-— etc. Chimps laugh too.
Anyway, I met a lady from SF and we started to chat. She mentioned that she had cats. I said something to the effect that she must be a cat lover. She replied, not really. She said she had a large valuable collection of English china and art glass, and that she kept the cats to warn her of impending tremors & earthquakes. When the cats started to act a certain way, she made her collection safe by removing it from shelves. I never forgot that conservation.