talk like a varmint
Dec. 6th, 2004 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saint_monkeyBiologists discover that Prairie dogs have a universal word for "Biologist with cardboard cut-out of predator."
Language of Prairie Dogs Includes Words for Humans
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/prairie_dogs_041206.html
From the story:
Personally I can't wait until they discover a way to write the prairie dog language so that I can print bumper-stickers that say "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for (Prairie dog word for Black-Oval.)"
I wonder if prairie-dog will count as a language proficiency? If so I should learn it and then I could become CNN's "Prairie-Dog" reporter (wait for it!...) "in the field."
Wolf Blitzer: "Thank you Senator McCain, And now we join Steffan Ziegler in a Prairie-dog city in Kansas for the Prairie-Dog reaction to the recent crisis in the Middle East. Steffan, what is the sentiment of the "Dog on the Street?"
Steffan: "Grunt-Click-Click-Pop_Wheeze: Arab-Israeli Conflict?" (Translation: Prairie-Dog, how do you think the stupid-humans should settle the Arab-Isreli Conflict?")
Prairie Dog: "Whistle-Click-Pop-Grunt." (Translation: "Of course, If they were sensible they'd just leave the Arabs to the surface and build an interconnected network of tunnels for themselves. But considering the stupid-human point of view: Peace can not be achieved until the Palistinians are allowed a state with a contiguous border. Any other "piecemeal" offer can't be considered seriously. Oh yeah, Ban the facist practice of "Whack a Mole" NOW!")
Steffan: "He says 'Bush is a Weenie.' "
Wolf: "There you have it, Prairie Dogs say: 'Bush is a Winner.'"
Language of Prairie Dogs Includes Words for Humans
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/prairie_dogs_041206.html
From the story:
Some of those words or calls were created by the prairie dogs when they saw something for the first time. Four prairie dogs in Slobodchikoff's lab were shown a great-horned owl and European ferret, two animals they had likely not seen before, if only because the owls are mostly nocturnal and this kind of ferret is foreign. The prairie dogs independently came up with the same new calls.
In the field, black plywood cutouts showing the silhouette of a coyote, a skunk and an oval shape were randomly run along a wire through the prairie dog colony.
"There are no black ovals running around out there and yet they all had the same word for black oval," Slobodchikoff said.
He guesses the prairie dogs are genetically programmed with some vocabulary and the ability to describe things.
Personally I can't wait until they discover a way to write the prairie dog language so that I can print bumper-stickers that say "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for (Prairie dog word for Black-Oval.)"
I wonder if prairie-dog will count as a language proficiency? If so I should learn it and then I could become CNN's "Prairie-Dog" reporter (wait for it!...) "in the field."
Wolf Blitzer: "Thank you Senator McCain, And now we join Steffan Ziegler in a Prairie-dog city in Kansas for the Prairie-Dog reaction to the recent crisis in the Middle East. Steffan, what is the sentiment of the "Dog on the Street?"
Steffan: "Grunt-Click-Click-Pop_Wheeze: Arab-Israeli Conflict?" (Translation: Prairie-Dog, how do you think the stupid-humans should settle the Arab-Isreli Conflict?")
Prairie Dog: "Whistle-Click-Pop-Grunt." (Translation: "Of course, If they were sensible they'd just leave the Arabs to the surface and build an interconnected network of tunnels for themselves. But considering the stupid-human point of view: Peace can not be achieved until the Palistinians are allowed a state with a contiguous border. Any other "piecemeal" offer can't be considered seriously. Oh yeah, Ban the facist practice of "Whack a Mole" NOW!")
Steffan: "He says 'Bush is a Weenie.' "
Wolf: "There you have it, Prairie Dogs say: 'Bush is a Winner.'"
