Animal Communication Overview

Abstract

Animals, like humans, communicate with one another, often in strikingly complex ways. Despite obvious differences between human communication and communication in animals, there are many fundamental similarities in the underlying principles. Anticipating how and why animals communicate makes an important comparison to human communication and provides a broader background for understanding human speech and language. Communication in animals and humans has a shared evolutionary history and thus understanding animal communication also helps to elucidate the biological basis of human language. Communication in animals has deep implications for their social life, survival, and fitness; thus,communication systems are among the key research models to elucidate biological processes from within a mechanistic and an evolutionary perspective. It allows the integration of questions raised in, for instance, psychology and very different biological fields, including physiology, neurobiology, genetics, development, and cognition as well as population biology and evolution. Communication, in general, is one of the most fundamental issues in life, as it is crucial at all organismal levels. Cells must communicate within an organism and there are specific adaptations for signals, such as hormones and transmitters, that act as information carriers at these levels. When talking about animal communication, however, we refer to communication among individuals, which is the topic of this article.