Human–animal communication is the communication observed between humans and other animals, ranging from non-verbal cues and vocalizations to the use of language. Some human–animal communication may be observed in casual circumstances, such as the interactions between pets and their owners, which can reflect a form of spoken, while not necessarily verbal dialogue. A dog being scolded is able to grasp the message by interpreting cues such as the owner's stance, tone of voice, and body language. This communication is two-way, as owners can learn to discern the subtle differences between barks or meows, and there is a clear difference between the bark of an angry dog defending its home and the happy bark of the same animal while playing. Communication (often nonverbal) is also significant in equestrian activities such as dressage. One scientific study has found that 30 bird species and 29 mammal species share the same pattern of pitch and speed in basic messages. Therefore, humans and those 59 species can understand each other when they express "aggression, hostility, appeasement, approachability, submission and fear."
Birds Parrots are able to use words meaningfully in linguistic tasks. For example, a grey parrot named Alex learned one hundred words, and after training used English words to answer questions about color, shapes, size and numbers correctly about 80% of the time. He also wanted to try to go without training; said where he wanted to be taken, such as his cage or the back of a chair; and protested when taken elsewhere or when hidden objects were not where he thought they were. He asked what color he was, which has been called the only question so far asked by a non-human animal. Scientific American editor Madhusree Mukerjee described these abilities as creativity and reasoning comparable to nonhuman primates or cetaceans, while expressing concern that extensive language use resulted in feather-plucking behavior, a possible sign of stress. Most bird species have at least six calls which humans can learn to understand, for situations including danger, distress, hunger, and the presence of food. Pigeons can identify different artists. Pigeons can learn to recognize up to 58 four-letter English words, with an average of 43, though they were not taught any meanings to associate with the words. Java sparrows chose music by sitting on a particular perch, which determined which music was played. Two birds preferred Bach and Vivaldi over Schoenberg or silence. The other two birds had varying preferences among Bach, Schoenberg, white noise and silence. The greater honeyguide has a specific call to alert humans that it can lead them to honey, and also responds to a specific human call requesting such a lead. By leading humans to honeybee hives, it can eat the discarded honeycomb wax after the honey is collected. The human call varies regionally, so the honeyguide's response is learned in each area, not instinctive. Crows identify and respond differently to different human faces and can be trained to understand and reply to verbal commands. Fictional portrayals of sentient talking parrots and similar birds are common in children's fiction, such as the talking, loud-mouth parrot Iago of Disney's Aladdin.
Primates
Chimpanzees can make at least 32 sounds with distinct meanings for humans. Chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans have used sign language, physical tokens, keyboards and touch screens to communicate with humans in numerous research studies. The research showed that they understood multiple signals and produced them to communicate with humans. There is a broad consensus among linguists that sign language experiments with great apes have not produced any evidence of true linguistic ability, and high profile examples such as Koko have faced intense criticism, despite public perceptions of the experiments. Baboons can learn to recognize an average of 139 four-letter English words (maximum of 308), though they were not taught any meanings to associate with the words. Primates have also been trained to use touch screens to tell a researcher their musical preferences. In Toronto, for hundreds of songs in random order, orangutans were given one 30-second segment of a song, and then chose between repeating that segment or 30 seconds of silence. Different orangutans chose to replay from 8% to 48% of the segments, and all exhibited stress throughout the trials. There was no pattern of selections by genre, and the researchers did not look for other attributes that were shared by the orangutans' chosen segments. No comparison was available as to how many 30-second segments humans would repeat in the same situation. In another experiment, the orangutans did not distinguish between music played in its original order and music sliced into half-second intervals, which were played in random order. Chimpanzees can hear higher frequencies than humans. If orangutans can too, and if these overtones are present in the recordings, the overtones would affect their choices.
Cetaceans
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