[HN Gopher] Chimps strike stones against trees as communication,...
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Chimps strike stones against trees as communication, study suggests
Author : pseudolus
Score : 81 points
Date : 2025-05-27 12:29 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| Caelus9 wrote:
| I've always felt that every animal probably has its own kind of
| language. We humans just can't always hear it or make sense of
| it. I remember reading about a study on dolphin sounds that
| actually won an award. The patterns in how they communicate were
| surprisingly complex. These kinds of studies don't just help us
| understand animals better. They can also inspire new ideas in
| other parts of life. Pretty cool stuff.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| While pretty much every animal communicates, that's radically
| different from human language.
| prox wrote:
| Animal communities are surprisingly complex. And while they
| don't deal in abstractions much like we do, their ability to
| make things known is impressive,
| perfmode wrote:
| > And while they don't deal in abstractions much like we do
|
| I do believe that such a statement won't stand the test of
| time.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Language is communication, but not all communication is
| language.
| growlNark wrote:
| I'm fine with calling it language. We have other ways of
| feeling special.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Ok, then we need a new word to differentiate between human
| language and other animal language, because they are still
| quite different.
| growlNark wrote:
| I think you distinguished them admirably. It tends to be
| pretty obvious from context which meaning is intended.
|
| Hell, we use "design language" even if it's clearly not
| language; i see little reason why this should be
| different. And of course the rest of the non-verbal
| chomsky hierarchy has little relation to how most folks
| use the word (hell, I bet most coders can't even tell you
| what a regular language is despite using regular
| expressions).
|
| But, particularly when it comes to stuff like bird song,
| it shows a lot of features of syntax. I just don't want
| to throw the baby out with the bathwater arguing over
| what to call it.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Until recently we didn't even think women and Africans were
| that intelligent. Never undestimate people's ability to
| underestimate others.
| Bas123 wrote:
| My cat and his archenemy have a way to communicate indirectly
| through the birds shared between the houses. If the birds starts
| to chirp loudly, my cat becomes alert, not looking at the birds,
| but at the place his fellow cat might come from.
| reify wrote:
| It was a few years ago now, but I remember watching a video with;
| Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, standing
| around a tree communicating with each other by striking stones on
| it.
|
| They were discussing the future of AI.
| seethishat wrote:
| Interesting. People claim that 'Bigfoot' hits trees with rocks
| too. So maybe Bigfoot is just a North American ape of some
| kind... if it really exists.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| "Tree-knocking" by Sasquatch has been witnessed. I immediately
| thought of this when I read the article. Although, Sasquatch
| has been thought to use branches, not stones, to strike the
| trees.
| hbarka wrote:
| Knock knock
| dylan604 wrote:
| to get to the other side?
| CommenterPerson wrote:
| Sometimes I strike my head against the wall to communicate
| distress.
| kragen wrote:
| Humans have also used drums, often wooden slit gongs, for long-
| distance communication, relaying the message every few
| kilometers. Although talking drums are no longer a leading
| communications technology (telephone lines, radio, and fiber
| optics carry farther and have higher bandwidth) they are still in
| traditional and ritual use, much like handwriting, candles, IRC
| servers, and <table> layout. The West African versions of this
| form of communication are the best known, but it has been used in
| many parts of the world.
|
| Transposed into the world of radio, this approach is known as
| "ultrawideband" or "time domain radio".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_drum
|
| https://time.com/archive/6771186/science-drum-telegraphy/ 01942:
| "Any pulp writer worth his salt knows that when his locale is
| darkest Africa he can't use too many drums. In a good standard
| plot, talking drums warn fierce natives of the unsuspecting white
| man's approach while the reader shudders. Last week in Natural
| History Dr. Albert Irwin Good, who understands Bulu and related
| African dialects, published the first popular article on the
| linguistics of drums, the complicated telegraphy whereby African
| drummers talk across the jungle."
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00437956.1945.11...
| 01945: Drum-signaling in a West African Tribe, by George Herzog.
| "The use of musical instruments for purposes of signaling is very
| widespread, and definite systems of communication are or were
| based on it in native Africa, Middle and South America, and the
| Pacific. The African systems are the most elaborate and often
| serve for free conversation; their existence is well known to the
| anthropologist and the traveler, hut they have been little
| investigated from the linguistic point of view, and still less in
| their social setting."
|
| https://pen.org/drums-that-talk/ (Gleick?) "For a long time
| Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa had no idea. In fact they had no
| idea that the drums conveyed information at all. In their own
| cultures, in special cases a drum could be an instrument of
| signaling, along with the bugle and the bell, used to transmit a
| small set of messages: attack; retreat; come to church. But they
| could not conceive of talking drums. (...) That result was a
| technology much sought in Europe: long-distance communication
| faster than any traveler on foot or horseback. Through the still
| night air over a river, the thump of the drum could carry six or
| seven miles. Relayed from village to village, messages could
| rumble a hundred miles or more in a matter of an hour."
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/50p1b7/til_t...
| "I spent a good chunk of my childhood in Nigeria and as a result
| of learning to play the drums I happened to pick up the talking
| drums as well and even though my spoken Yoruba is absolutely
| horrendous now (I can still understand), I can still speak Yoruba
| with the talking drums."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT3tIJzAkcc a short message with
| a transcription
| Alive-in-2025 wrote:
| Wow, those are very interesting references. Also the 5 digit
| years are a little ahead of its time and interesting too. Could
| you be a time traveler?
| filoeleven wrote:
| It's a year-numbering style promoted by the Long Now
| foundation. Always seemed a bit silly and distracting to me.
| pvg wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKOc6hXMDhc&t=86s
| calibas wrote:
| They also encoded messages, so they had a high-speed
| communications network that used cryptography. In essence, it
| was an early version of the internet.
|
| I've noticed a bit of resistance in Western cultures when I
| bring this up. People tend to think of Africa as "primitive",
| and there's some cognitive dissonance when you realize Africa
| had the world's most sophisticated communications system.
|
| I'm not making this claim lightly either. They had a start/end
| signals, a "header" with an address, and a message payload,
| repeated for error-correction. There was also a whole routing
| and QoS system, albeit done manually.
| kragen wrote:
| Yes, the talking drums are attested in Africa from the 18th
| century, before electrical communication of any kind. Also,
| though, remember that the second writing system in the world
| originated in Africa 5000 years ago--older than the Olmec,
| older than oracle bones, probably older than the khipu. What
| were Western cultures doing at the time?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnelbeaker_culture:
|
| > _The TRB introduced farming and husbandry as major food
| sources to the pottery-using hunter-gatherers north of this
| line. (...) Although they were largely of Early European
| Farmer (EEF) descent, people of the Funnelbeaker culture had
| a relatively high amount of hunter-gatherer admixture,
| particularly in Scandinavia, suggesting that hunter-gatherer
| populations were partially incorporated into it during its
| expansion into this region.[7] People of the Funnelbeaker
| culture often had between 30% and 50% hunter-gatherer
| ancestry depending on the region. (...) In the early 3rd
| millennium BCE, the Corded Ware culture appeared in Northern
| Europe. Its peoples were of marked steppe-related ancestry
| and traced their origins in cultures further east. This
| period is distinguished by the construction of numerous
| defensive palisades in Funnelbeaker territory, which may be a
| sign of violent conflict between the Funnelbeakers, Corded
| Ware, and Pitted Ware.[13] By 2650 BCE, the Funnelbeaker
| culture had been replaced by the Corded Ware culture. (...)_
|
| > _In Frydenlund, Funen, Denmark, the grinding stones were
| used to grind wild plants only. In Oldenburg, Germany, grain
| was processed. In Frydenlund, the absence of cereal grinding
| combined and an abundance of carbonised cereals from soil
| samples indicates that probably grain was processed to a
| porridge-like meal.[18] In Oldenburg, in contrast, bread
| (possible flat bread) was produced in addition to
| porridge.[20][16] (...)_
|
| > _The Funnel Beaker Culture is associated with skilfully
| crafted objects such as flint axes or battle axes._
|
| > _At Flintbek in northern Germany cart tracks dating from c.
| 3400 BCE were discovered underneath a megalithic long barrow.
| This is the earliest known direct evidence for wheeled
| vehicles in the world (i.e. not models or
| images).[25][26][27][28]_
|
| Meanwhile, in Africa:
|
| > _In a 2013 study based on radiocarbon dates, the accession
| of Hor-Aha, the second king of the First Dynasty, was placed
| between 3111 and 3045 BC with 68% confidence, and between
| 3218 and 3035 with 95% confidence.[3] The same study placed
| the accession of Den, the sixth king of the dynasty, between
| 2928 and 2911 BC with 68% confidence,[3] although a 2023
| radiocarbon analysis placed Den 's accession potentially
| earlier, between 3011 and 2921, within a broader window of
| 3104 to 2913.[4] (...)_
|
| > _Information about this dynasty is derived from a few
| monuments and other objects bearing royal names, the most
| important being the Narmer Palette and Narmer Macehead, as
| well as Den and Qa 'a king lists.[5][6][7] No detailed
| records of the first two dynasties have survived, except for
| the terse lists on the Palermo Stone. (...) Egyptian
| hieroglyphs were fully developed by then, and their shapes
| would be used with little change for more than three thousand
| years._
|
| No wheels, though; those were probably an Indo-European
| invention.
|
| I think it's probably a mistake to try to make general
| statements about all of Africa. The majority of human
| cultural and genetic diversity is found in Africa, so
| generalizations about Africans are somewhat similar to
| generalizations about non-elephant mammals.
| calibas wrote:
| > Yes, the talking drums are attested in Africa from the
| 18th century
|
| This highlights another important bias when viewing African
| history through the lens of Western culture. Talking drums
| are likely much much older, but oral history gets ignored,
| and the "official" history is really just the first time a
| European wrote it down.
| growlNark wrote:
| This has the added complication that oral historians
| were/are a political institution in many parts of the
| continent (unlike, say, reproducers of folklore). So
| "official" history _very clearly_ predates written
| history we have today--and certainly in European
| languages--but it 's still the product of conscious
| maintenance of image. That said, written records (say,
| inscriptions on a victory stele) have this issue too.
|
| It's also worth noting that there is strong indication
| that pre-colonial states in subsaharan africa well
| outside the horn of africa did keep written language for
| the purposes of managing bureaucracies. Hell, arabic was
| adopted in east africa many centuries before europeans
| ever set foot there. The technology was certainly not
| unknown. However, if indeed this was the case, it clearly
| did not spread far beyond the needs of centralized
| bureaucracy, nor was it likely used for what we would now
| call private commerce, and we have no surviving records
| showing the scripts.
| kragen wrote:
| The nice thing about written records is that the victory
| stela necessarily tells you the same story that it told
| the literate subset of Ramesses's subjects 3200 years
| ago. Oral history can be extremely well preserved, but it
| can also be tailored to the listener. And it can be hard
| to date reliably, though there are exceptions. For
| example, people in many places in the world have oral
| traditions of having lived there since the world began or
| for specific numbers of years that are much greater than
| the archaeological evidence supports.
|
| > _It 's also worth noting that there is strong
| indication that pre-colonial states in subsaharan africa
| well outside the horn of africa did keep written language
| for the purposes of managing bureaucracies. (...) The
| technology was certainly not unknown. However, if indeed
| this was the case, it clearly did not spread far beyond
| the needs of centralized bureaucracy. However, if indeed
| this was the case, it clearly did not spread far beyond
| the needs of centralized bureaucracy, nor was it likely
| used for what we would now call private commerce, and we
| have no surviving records showing the scripts._
|
| This is not correct.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu_Manuscripts
| explains:
|
| > _Timbuktu Manuscripts, or Tombouctou Manuscripts, is a
| blanket term for the large number of historically
| significant manuscripts that have been preserved for
| centuries in private households in Timbuktu, a city in
| northern Mali. The collections include manuscripts about
| art, medicine, philosophy, and science, as well as copies
| of the Quran.[6] Timbuktu manuscripts are the most well
| known set of West African manuscripts. (...) Some 350,000
| manuscripts were transported to safety, and 300,000 of
| them were still in Bamako in 2022._
|
| > _The dates of the manuscripts range between the late
| 13th and the early 20th centuries (i.e., from the
| Islamisation of the Mali Empire until the decline of
| traditional education in French Sudan).[11] Their subject
| matter ranges from scholarly works to short letters.
| (...)_
|
| > _Scribes in Timbuktu translated imported works of
| numerous well-known individuals (such as Plato,
| Hippocrates, and Avicenna) as well as reproducing a
| "twenty-eight volume Arabic language dictionary called
| The Mukham, written by an Andalusian scholar in the mid-
| eleventh century."[15]: 25 Original books were also
| written by local authors, covering subjects such as
| history, religion, law, philosophy and poetry. (...)_
|
| > _Some manuscripts contain instructions on nutrition and
| therapeutic properties of desert plants, whilst others
| debate matters such as "polygamy, moneylending, and
| slavery."[15]: 27 The manuscripts include "catalogues of
| spells and incantations; astrology; fortune-telling;
| black magic; necromancy, or communication with the dead
| by summoning their spirits to discover hidden knowledge;
| geomancy, or divining markings on the ground made from
| tossed rocks, dirt, or sand; hydromancy, reading the
| future from the ripples made from a stone cast into a
| pool of water; and other occult subjects..."[15]: 27 A
| volume titled Advising Men on Sexual Engagement with
| Their Women acted as a guide on aphrodasiacs and
| infertility remedies, as well as offering advice on
| "winning back" their wives._
|
| This is far beyond the needs of centralized bureaucracy,
| and substantial numbers of records do survive despite the
| best efforts of Boko Haram.
| growlNark wrote:
| Ah yea, sorry, I mean in addition to what we already know
| for sure--Timbuktu is emphatically not what I was
| referring to (although--I had forgotten about Timbuktu
| libraries, and it makes my point better than I did, so I
| appreciate your bringing it up!). I'm referring to oral
| evidence of writing in Great Zimbabwe (among other places
| I'm sure). If they had developed script, we unfortunately
| lack evidence of it.
|
| My point more _broadly_ is that prevalence of an oral
| tradition doesn 't imply the lack of capacity to develop
| a written one. As Timbuktu is _perfect_ evidence of--
| their libraries coexisted (and still do today) with
| griots, and the two repositories of knowledge _seem_ to
| serve distinct functions in society.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I have many history books. There's no such thing as an
| official history. Historians write about what interests
| them, through the lens of their own opinions and
| experiences.
| kragen wrote:
| I interpret calibas to mean that oral history is not
| generally considered to really be history ("official"
| history), while written books sometimes are. I believe
| that this is correct, and that there are excellent
| reasons for it, related to verifiability of provenance
| and mutability. I do not think that calibas was referring
| to some kind of official _imprimatur_.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > oral history is not generally considered to really be
| history
|
| Probably because it is not considered to be reliable. For
| example, "hearsay" is inadmissible as evidence in court.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Google: "As early as 1653, the British Navy utilized flags
| to send messages between ships by varying their placement
| and arrangement."
|
| Google: "The practice of using church bell signals to call
| people to worship and mark time is widely attributed to
| Paulinus of Nola, a Bishop of Nola in Campania, Italy,
| around AD 400. He is credited with introducing the first
| church bells into the Christian Church."
|
| Church bells can be heard for miles.
| kragen wrote:
| Yes, but the British Navy didn't have a system of
| relaying messages from one station to another over long
| distances, and church bells (mentioned in the text I
| quoted from Gleick (?) in my comment upthread) normally
| don't carry messages at all; everyone knows the sequence
| they will be rung in before they ring, so the information
| content is zero. You _could_ hypothetically use them to
| relay coded messages over long distances, but to the best
| of our knowledge, nobody did.
|
| Similarly, Archimedes had mirrors, even if he may not
| have burned ships with them, so he could have invented
| the heliotrope or heliograph, but in fact that had to
| wait for Gauss.
|
| The first telegraph relay system in Europe used a
| semaphore system similar to the British Navy's, but it
| wasn't deployed until 01792:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph At that
| point the relaying of drum messages over long distances
| through many stations was already practiced in parts of
| Africa.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Church bells were used to mark time, and announce major
| events like the death of the king and probably a few
| others. Those are information content - but of course
| very limited. The bells weren't for entertainment
| (although I enjoy hearing those massive gongs, and church
| bells often appear in recorded music).
|
| It's a bit hard for me to imagine drums working in
| medieval Europe. I don't think they would propagate as
| well as the sound of church bells. Heck, I could identify
| church bells from miles away, nothing else carries like
| that. Outdoor concerts don't seem to carry far at all,
| for example.
| kragen wrote:
| That's true! The king's death is a message!
|
| Generally lower frequency sounds are less attenuated by
| air, and they diffract better around obstacles, and drums
| are better at producing low-frequency sounds. So I'd
| think that drums would carry better than bells over many
| kilometers.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Bjork said this decades ago.
|
| I am positive that there's an early-90's Sugarcubes song with the
| lyrics "bangs a tree with a rock."
| rickydroll wrote:
| "We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms
| everywhere... and to everyone else out there, the secret is to
| bang the rocks together, guys!"
|
| https://planetclaire.tv/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/rocks.mp3
| bilsbie wrote:
| A bit of a personal Mandela effect for me is animals being way
| smarter in the past five years.
|
| I distinctly remember reading an an animal above newspaper column
| 30 years ago where the author considered the person absurd for
| suggesting her dog gets mad and she leaves and pees on the
| furniture out of spite.
|
| Nowadays we have dogs talking using buttons and expressing all
| kind of complex emotions.
| knowitnone wrote:
| We pay people to study this? Two videos, the first shows the
| chimp dropping a rock and hitting the tree with feet. Second
| video shows chimp throwing a rock against a tree and screaming
| hysterically. Based on this, they claim it is communications?
| Sure, if doing anything is communication but that thud on the
| tree certainly isn't heard very far away. Their screeches were
| much louder and travel further. This is not science, this is a
| joke!
| jurgenaut23 wrote:
| Every time I read a study that reports animals being smarter than
| we thought, I cannot help but think that this is obvious.
|
| We humans are animals, nothing less, nothing more. We are animals
| with big brains, sure, but nothing of importance sets us apart
| from other animals.
|
| To me, this whole idea of "human exceptionalism" has simply no
| plausibility, both from a biological and a philosophical
| standpoint.
| jpease wrote:
| Chimps strike stones against trees as communication.
|
| Communication translated:
|
| "You see this stone? Get any closer and you're next, Timmy.
| Seriously. I'm in no kind of mood to be messed with today."
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