Human-animal communication

Abstract

Since the demise in the 1980s of research by psychologists who attempted to teach human language to apes, a range of other perspectives has arisen that explore how humans can communicate with animals and what the possibility of such communication means. Sociologists interested in symbolic interactionism, anthropologists writing about ontology, equestrian and canine trainers, people with autism who say they understand animals because they think like animals, and a ragbag of sundry New Age women who claim to be able to converse with animals through telepathy have started discussing human-animal communication in ways that recast the whole point of thinking about it. This review charts how interest in human-animal communication has moved from a concern with cognition to a concern with ethics, and it discusses the similarities and differences that exist among the range of writing on this topic.