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Asked by anon-181142 on 4 Jun 2018. This question was also asked by anon-181236, anon-181395.
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Liza Selley answered on 4 Jun 2018:
That would be so cool! I’d love to know why my hamster does the silly things he does.
I think what will happen is that humans will understand more about how animals communicate with each other – they already have their own languages and it’s probably easier to learn more about those than try to teach animals ours (and which would we pick?!). Animal scientists (zoologists) are doing this every day and can tell whether some animals are happy, scared, hungry or lonely.
Sadly for me, hamsters don’t seem to show much emotion so I’ll have to stick to googling ‘why does my hamster bite people’s toes/ chuck poop at me/ sit on my face!?’ to figure him out.
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Helen Cooper answered on 5 Jun 2018:
As Liza said, animal scientists are looking into how animals communicate with each other and have already been able to teach animals ways to communicate with people, such as by using sign language.
Parrots are very good at imitating our voices; but I’m not sure other animals would be able to make the range of sounds we use as part of our language.
As we learn more about animal interactions and behaviour, hopefully we will be able to understand more about how animals are feeling without them being able to talk. I work with mice and it’s very difficult to know how they are feeling or what they are thinking – I think they mainly want food, water and friends to play with!
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Lauren Burns answered on 8 Jun 2018:
I am unsure about talking, but there are lots of animals that do/can communicate with humans! For examples, apes, chimpanzees and orangutans have been shown to be able to learn sign-language and sign with people (check out Koko the ape and Chantek the orangutan!)
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anon-181142 commented on :
Thank you for answering!