The world is a wonderful place, brimming with a plethora of animals, the majority of which stick together in their schools, prides and colonies. When living with many others, you need to be able to communicate with each other to successfully survive as one. So the question is: how do animals do this? And more specifically, do animals use language to communicate the way us Homo sapiens do?

Vocalisations, body language, chemical signals, bioluminescence[1]; there are so many different ways animals communicate, most of which humans are not capable of. Cynomys (Prairie Dogs) and Delphinidae (Dolphins) are some animals considered to have the most complex communication systems. Cynomys communicate through territorial calls ‘jump-yips’, anti-predator calls and mating calls - all examples of vocalisations[2]. On the contrary, Delphinidae communicate using echolocation - a very rare form of communication in which they make a ‘click’ sound and interpret the sound waves that bounce back other creatures and objects in the ocean[3]. 

Humans cannot communicate in the way these animals do (apart from some vocalisations), so is our understanding of language and depicting other species’ ways of communication human centric or do animals genuinely not have the ability to have language?