this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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No we don’t. No other animal has the ability to use language the way we do. Or to conceive situations as we can. At least so far as 20,000 years of recent history has revealed. It’s not even close. We’re unbelievably, fantastically strange compared to all other animals.
Almost like, humans are some kind of outside species in a world full of organisms that otherwise work on the same principles.
What about birds, dolphins and wales then? They arguably also communicate in complex ways as we do through another type of "language". Also on another note, animals also do use propositions, while this is still discussed in behavioural sciences, scientists are pretty sure that dogs for example do understand propositions too without having a language.
Also what makes us strage? Our species has lived through a lot of different states in history, which made us evolve more often than other species did, which makes us seem quite fifferent to other animals, while we are in construction still very close to other animals.
And compare us to chimps and bonobos. They are very similar to us in many ways except for the capabilities we excert through our neocortex, which is far more developed then theirs aside from some morphological differences.
And where do dolphines work on the same principles like ants? They are also extremely different, like we are to lets say pigeons.
I would call your argument invalid.
Typo on the Cymru, but point taken. Human language is more expressive, possibly more conceptually far-reaching although we’ll never know. And if that doesn’t do it: opposable thumbs. Check and mate, cetaceans!
Koalas have even two oposable thumbs but are not able to use them intellectually. They are smooth brained, because their digestive system is highly specialized for breaking down eucalyptus and this needs a lot of energy, so development of higher intellect is impaired in these animals. Else the potential would be extremely high for these to evolve similarly to us intellectually. Having two opposable thumbs is even more advantageous than just one. You can see that in a few cases of polydactyly, where these cases have a second pointing finger. They use it like a second thumb and are far more capable in manipulating objects with one hand than non-polydactylic humans are. Koalas could do that too, if they would have evolutionary more energy left for their brain.
Understanding other languages that never developed from each other are extremely hard to analyze from one of the two perspectives and it even seems more primitive on first glance. I wouldn't assume that dolphines are that intelligent to develop such a sophisticated language as we did with verbs, adjectives and what not but wales language has been tried to analize by correlating it with fitting propositions by creating a knowledgebase and it was found to be pretty sophisticated already.
Also as a cognitive scientist I have to say that our language might only seem from our perspective very sophisticated. If wales were more intelligent they would lough similarly about our weird noises we do with our mouths, because they are not built to understand our language, the same way as we are not built to understand their language.