Do you Speak Monkey?

Do you speak monkey? Yes, I know that’s a strange question, but humans seem to think that they can be understood by foreigners by speaking slowly and loudly, so I’m guessing that same logic would also work on animals with close genetic ties to humans such as monkeys. But I’ll digress…

Many, many years ago, I took a road trip from Chicago to Tucson with my cousins. At some point we decided to stop for lunch at a restaurant in New Mexico. To tell you how long ago this was, we were getting directions from a road map! Anyway, after many miles and no restaurant in sight, we decided to pull off to the side of the road when we spotted a fruit stand with a sign that read, “Se habla Inglés aquí”

My cousin, who claimed to speak fluent Spanish, got out of the car to chat with the vendor and said loudly, “HELLO! Deew U Noooo the way to Laz Cruces? At this point, I’m laughing so hard that I can barely breathe because even I could read the sign that said he spoke English, and apparently she was only fluent in gibberish!

Anyway, you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this, so I’ll digress a bit more…

It has been my observation of English speaking humans in the USA, that in general when they are faced with a non-English speaking person, somehow they think that by saying the words slowly and loudly, they will be understood. And this makes very little sense, other than the foreign person, while they may not understand the words, at the very least, they understand that the person is attempting to communicate with them.

And this same communication technique is used on our pet dogs because they, like the foreigner, understand that the human is trying to communicate something. I say dogs, because I’ve never seen people insulting their cats like this.

Dogs have the unique and unfortunate ability to read human body language. I say unfortunate because humans rely on words, and are clueless that their body is even moving, where as the dog is paying attention to what it sees. Sure dogs can be taught words, similar to the way a human toddler is taught words, but they rely on their first language which is visual. I cannot tell you how many times I am with a client and they tell the dog “Sit” and if the dog doesn’t respond, they become very loud, louder, loudest, repeating the word over and over, until the dog sits. To be clear, it wouldn’t matter how loud the human says, “BRING ME A BEER”, Fido is not going to refrigerator! That said, the reason the dog ends up sitting is because along with the loud voice the human tends to tilt forward. If you don’t believe me, ask your dog to do a known behavior with your back turned. Highly unlikely you’ll get the desired response because your body language is unreadable to the dog! But this doesn’t stop the human from communicating in words, which when not responded to by the dog, the humans just says “He knows what I’m talking about, but he’s just being stubborn!”

Getting back to the foreigner, let’s say that you brought them to your pottery class because they were interested in learning English. Yes, bizarre example, but it’s relevant. The question is would you hold up a block of clay and teach them the word, “Ashtray”? (my specialty in high school pottery class!) Or would you make the ashtray and then teach them the word?

In modern dog training, we show the dog how to do the behavior using a gesture (hand-signal), and reward the heck out of it when the dog does the behavior. Once he can respond to the hand-signal, we can attach the new word, to the hand-signal, and then say the word without giving the hand-signal. This is how they generally learn words, which is quite remarkable for an animal that isn’t even our species!

Monkeys, on the other hand, who are closely related genetically to humans, do not understand our gestures!  If you don’t believe me, stand in front of the monkey habitat at the zoo, and try communicating. If he tosses his poop at you, you’ll have your answer. Fortunately our dogs don’t resort to such tactics, although I’m guessing some would like to when we toss our words around!

HAPPY TRAINING & ENRICHMENT

© Fran Berry CPDT-KA, UW-AAB all rights reserved 2023