The number of repetitions per minute of the basic
pattern in the tail-wagging dance indicates the precise distance; the slower the
repetition rate, the longer the distance.
The bees’ dance is an effective system of communication for bees. It is capable,
in principle, of infinitely many different messages, like human language; but
unlike human language, the system is confined to a single subject—food source.
An experimenter who forced a bee to walk to the food source showed the inflexibility.
When the bee returned to the hive, it indicated a distance twenty-five
times farther away than the food source actually was. The bee had no way of
communicating the special circumstances in its message. This absence of creativity
makes the bee’s dance qualitatively different from human language.
In the seventeenth century, the philosopher and mathematician René Descartes
pointed out that the communication systems of animals are qualitatively
different from the language used by humans:
It is a very remarkable fact that there are none so depraved and stupid,
without even excepting idiots, that they cannot arrange different words
together, forming of them a statement by which they make known their
thoughts; while, on the other hand, there is no other animal, however
perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which can do the same.
Descartes goes on to state that one of the major differences between humans
and animals is that human use of language is not just a response to external,
or even internal, stimuli, as are the sounds and gestures of animals. He warns
against confusing human use of language with “natural movements which betray
passions and may be . . . manifested by animals.”
To hold that animals communicate by systems qualitatively different from
human language systems is not to claim human superiority. Humans are not
inferior to the one-celled amoeba because they cannot reproduce by splitting
in two; they are just different sexually. They are not inferior to hunting dogs,
whose sense of smell is far better than that of human animals. As we will discuss
in the next chapter, the human language ability is rooted in the human brain,
just as the communication systems of other species are determined by their biological
structure. All the studies of animal communication systems, including
those of primates, provide evidence for Descartes’ distinction between other animal
communication systems and the linguistic creative ability possessed by the
human animal.