People don’t want animals to be able to use language to communicate

The reason why people don’t want animals to be able to communicate using language is because if it is decided that animals can do this it presents huge ethical problems. It’ll open up the door to a greater awareness that animals, including farm animals, have emotional, mental lives and the ability to communicate with each other in a limited way and with us. This will raise the question as to how we deal and interact with them. It would place a barrier to caging animals and consuming them. It would wholly support the objectives of PETA.

Panbanisha a bonobo who learned to communicate with language
Panbanisha a bonobo who learned to communicate with language using lexigram symbols. She had a vocabularly of 250 words and an understanding of 3,000.

Sceptical scientists

It is probably fair to say that the majority of cat owners believe that their cat can communicate with them through language, the meow being one example, and of course through body language as well. But many scientists are sceptical about the ability of animals to employ language. They might argue that animals are simply observant and use fixed responses to stimuli combined with rewards to give the impression that they are communicating with language.

Businesses and the establishment

I believe that the establishment are less likely to believe that animals can communicate with language because it is the establishment who keep themselves as the establishment by keeping down animals and the masses. They don’t want enlightened thinking. It is too dangerous. If farm animals were found to communicate and if people believe that they have emotional and mental lives it would undermine the huge livestock industry. It would undermine business. It would undermine sport hunting, indeed all hunting by humans of animals for pleasure.

Many businesses want to promote the idea that animals are dumb, unfeeling creatures who don’t feel pain. A lot of establishment people believe this. A lot of them are delusional and fool themselves into believing it. As advances are made in our knowledge about animal physiology and behaviour we are becoming more and more aware of the similarities between animals and humans, their emotions, their discomfort and pain and that they can communicate. The domestic cat has learned to meow, a vocalisation, tailor-made to be directed at humans to make a demand and learned through observation.

Pain

There was a time not so long ago when veterinarians thought it unnecessary to administer painkillers after an operation because they believed that the companion animal did not feel pain. This attitude fostered declawing. It fosters an abusive attitude towards operations such as declawing which is often carried out too quickly.

Responsibiliities towards animals

The more skills we attribute to animals such as communication and emotions, the greater responsibility there will be upon us to treat animals more as equals and to a high standard. There will be less abuses and for business which are concerned with using animals to make profit, a heightened animal welfare policy will undermine their profits. This is something to be avoided. This is an example of the reason why people do not want to believe that animals can communicate using language.

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