Do Animals Have Language?

This question may seem strange when one considers the many forms of communication with which animals use: body signals, scents, sounds, their colouring, and many other methods to transmit information about themselves or the environment to conspecifics and non-conspecifics. Although it can be argued that the corresponding information is rigidly fixed as species-specific signals since it cannot easily be expanded into new meanings or statements, this does not invalidate the fundamental function of language as a means to transmit information and to (socially) interact. The following case of the honeybee’s tail dance shows how cautious one should be with all too quick attributions regarding rigidity of form, one-sidedness of function, and paucity of knowledge transmission. For a long time, the “dance language” of the honeybee, discovered by the Austrian behavioural physiologist Karl von Frisch [785, 786], was used as a textbook example of limited animal communication. Today, however, we know that the dance has high information content and a representational function, has an appeal function and a learning component, has dialects, and, last but not least, can also be passed on across species boundaries.