Do we, people, representatives of the same biological species and, moreover, who were born in the same part of the world, understand each other? I would venture to suggest that not always and not in everything. At least because of the language barrier. But if a resident of the Urals meets, for example, an Indian, by facial expressions, postures, gestures and other non-verbal signals, he will understand the emotions of the “interlocutor”. When it comes to innate ability, the place of birth does not matter.
about the same with animals. They need to understand each other in order to build relationships with a sexual partner, to continue offspring. Or declare their rights to the territory, production. Or coordinate actions in the flock.
To achieve mutual understanding, animals have a huge arsenal of methods and means - from smells and body movements to sounds and articulate speech. The most primitive of these are smells. For example, with the help of them, a male silkworm butterfly understands what a female of the same species expects from him at a distance of several kilometers. The same applies to body movements, postures and sounds - in the spirit of the spring singing of a starling. All this carries information that is understandable for representatives of their own species.
But even when it comes to innate abilities, there are exceptions. For example, some flies and mosquitoes are not guided by anything other than the call of their own flesh. During the mating season, they are ready to mate with anyone: with females and males, not only of their own species, but also of another. Moreover, even with a plasticine ball swinging on a string, or a large mole. The main thing is that the object should move and be the size it should be … So, as we see, there is an innate language, and there is also its innate absence.
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Moreover, animals evolve. Since new movements, gestures and sound combinations can be mastered by imitating a neighbor much faster than changing the body constitution and genetic code, the evolution of language in the broad sense of the word is fast. This leads to the fact that after a while individuals of populations that are far from each other become more and more dissimilar - both in appearance and in the manner of explaining themselves. Experts in the field of ethology, the science of behavior, have found that, for example, crows, magpies and jackdaws of the Old and New Worlds do not understand what their relatives from another continent are shouting about, and keep apart, without straying into common flocks.
Yulia Skopich