Partially Deceptive Signalling

I may have mentioned once or twice that Bow lies to me. What I haven't talked about as much are the partial lies, the half truths and those cryptic answers that just make me feel a little uneasy, knowing that something is up, but not knowing what exactly that is.

This morning there was some commotion outside. Bow suggested that I go out and check "You want me to go outside?" I asked him.

"תנסי לצאת" he qualified it. "Try to go outside." What does that mean? Why did he say "try"? Was he expecting that someone would stop me from going? Or that it would not be easy to leave? Or that unless I tried to go, I would never find out what might happen next? Did he have some trick up his sleeve?

So I went outside, hoping to see deer again, but it was only the neighbors' cattle grazing close to the fence line.

When I got back, it turned out that Bow had used the potty in my absence. He did so correctly, but since I was not there to help him wipe, it necessitated a little more cleanup. So in hindsight, I think Bow was signalling that it was okay for me to go, he would still be good, but things would not go as smoothly as I envisioned. And all that meaning was jammed into that one word "try".

Everybody is so interested in learning to communicate with animals, and to read their signals. There is this feeling that if only we understood each other better, something miraculous might happen. But very few take into account that since we cannot rely on anything a human being says to us, then we can't really expect "God's Truth" from other animals, either.

Take those deer on my land. They are sometimes seen in the woods.

I see the deer. The deer sees me. It stoops down to make sure I am really there, and then, absolutely certain of it, it leaves. And sometimes there is a whole group of them. They see me. I see them, somebody snorts, and they all turn around, flash their white tails at me and leave.

So the snorting is a signal that means "Hey, let's get out of here, we've been spotted!" -- right? Well, that was my naive interpretation of the signal, until I looked it up. It turns out that some experts believe the snort is not intended for the other deer at all. The snort could be an anti-predator signal, intended to tell me not to follow!

Snorting did not appear directed at conspecifics, and comparative data suggest that it signals that the predator has been detected. In contrast, foot-stamping was effective in alerting other deer to the observer's presence. Deer may have bounded to clear obstacles along their flight path. These preliminary data indicate that several aspects of anti-predator behavior in white-tailed deer may be pursuit-deterrent signals, and they therefore highlight the necessity of observing natural predators' reactions to signals given by deer in future studies. (Caro, Lombardo, Goldizen and Kelly,  Tail-Flagging and Other Anti-Predator Signals in white-tailed Deer.)

It is good to remember that not everything other animals do is directed at each other. Some of it may actually be directed at us. As such, we may be mistaking their attempt to speak our language for the whole sum total of theirs, which may be much more subtle and advanced and spoken in a pitch and at a rate that is too high for us to even take cognizance of.

I believe that some ethologists studying chimpanzees in the wild may have mistaken the chimps' cries intended for non-chimps to overhear as the sum total of all chimpanzee communication. It is for this reason that they believe chimpanzee vocalizations are extremely limited and do not carry much information.

But what sort of information would you direct at a predator, an outsider or an enemy, anyway? Wouldn't your chief purpose be to deceive him? And if you always lied, then what kind of deception would that be? How could that possibly work?

That's where this other paper comes in: Between cheap and costly signals: the evolution of partially honest communication

Beyond the empirical significance of our results, we have demonstrated an alternative evolutionary explanation for (partially) honest communication in situations of conflict of interest, which can range from parent–offspring interactions to mating advertisement to predator–prey interactions. Although this equilibrium had been previously observed [5,20], it was not known if this phenomena was an artefact of the particular games or if it represented a general phenomenon common to many different signalling interactions. In this paper, we show that this type of signalling is at least as evolutionarily plausible as that offered by the traditional costly signalling models and may fit better with the observed data on signal costs. In this respect, it may represent a superior theory to traditional handicap theory.

This is a novel concept for me, although in hindsight it sounds almost too simple. Lying and deception continue to pay off, but only if they are partial. Because no information could be conveyed unless you were honest at least part of the time, the optimal amount of deception would have to be only partial. This means that even the deer tell their predators the truth part of the time. Good to know!

Bow deciding what partial truth to tell me next

Bow Turns Eleven

Yesterday was Bow's eleventh birthday! The day started normally, with grapes for breakfast, followed by cereal.

 Although we didn't throw a party, there was cake and balloons and presents. As usual, Bow got very excited when I started singing the birthday song. The dogs also wanted to join in. We could hear Brownie howling outside, as if he, too, wanted to sing the birthday song to Bow. In the end, Bow was vocalizing to the dogs in response to their birthday greetings.

The cake was a cheesecake sampler. Each piece was a little different, but they were all cheesecake at their base. Bow chose the "brown" piece -- which had chocolate and nuts on top.

If you would like to see footage of Bow eating his cake, please read today's post in "The Feast Before Us".
There wasn't just cake, though. There were also balloons.

Bow received a basket full of goodies from his uncle for his birthday. It arrived by Federal Express the day before, and it was labeled "Open At Once: Perishable". The box was addressed to "Bow Katz".

Bow wanted to open the basket of goodies when it first arrived, but I told him it was a birthday present from his uncle, and he had to wait till his birthday. Bow spelled: לקשת יש דוד טוב. "Bow has a good uncle."

Here are some pictures of Bow enjoying a luscious pear from his fruit basket on his birthday.

If you would like to see some footage of Bow eating the pear, please check today's entry on "The Feast Before Us."

I also gave Bow a couple of other presents more suitable for a literary chimpanzee -- a giant pencil and a small notepad, but to be honest with you, he was not impressed.

I don't feel too bad about that. Parents are always trying to give kids educational toys that the children just ignore. It's normal!

All in all, Bow had a pretty exciting and happy birthday.

Bow's Singing

Bow claims that he can sing.  He says he can sing better than me and Sword. Is he merely boasting? There are times when it seems as if he is trying to match pitch, like at his birthday party, when he wanted to sing along with the birthday song. I once thought I heard him sing a few notes of  "The Pomegranate Tree", an Israeli song that I sing him every night before he goes to bed. However, there is no recording to back me up on this, it just happened once, and maybe it was wishful thinking. If he does sing, he must do it when no one is listening. Or it could be another of his lies.

Sword was thinking about maybe taking voice lessons, but she decided not to. Bow told Lawrence this morning that he thought Sword should sing. Lawrence asked him why. Bow spelled: "To make people listen to her."

When Bow told me at lunch that Sword should sing, I said: "She doesn't want to. Maybe you should sing, instead."

"Yes," he spelled.

Chimpanzee Vocalizations

I mentioned in my last post that when Bow got upset with me about the apple, he started screaming. Now, of course, all I mean by that is that it sounded like inarticulate screaming to me. But Bow claims that when he does that, it's not screaming. He insists that he is talking, but I'm too deaf or slow to understand him.

Chimpanzee vocalizations are generally higher pitched and faster than our own speech. Consonants, or syllable onset, the period of time before the vowel is heard, are shorter. This means that for a human being to identify a chimp's attempt at a consonant using the naked ear and in real time is pretty much impossible.

Research is currently being undertaken to see if there is some way to identify hidden contrasts in chimpanzee and bonobo vocalizations.

Meanwhile, Bow is kept completely isolated and not allowed to talk via phone or Skype with other chimps and bonobos. Is there any logical reason for the total embargo on communication with Project Bow?