The simplest or most obvious method of animal communication is by inarticulate cries, expressive of hunger, loneliness, anger, pleasure, and other primal needs or emotions. The wild creatures are mostly silent, and so is the bulk of their “talk,” I think; but they frequently raise their voice in the morning or evening twilight, and by observing them attentively at such a time you may measure the effect of their so-called language. Thus, you see plainly that to one call the animal cocks his ear and gives answer; at another call he becomes wildly excited; a third passes over him without visible result; a fourth sets his feet in motion toward the sound or else [11]sends him flying away from it, according to its message or import.

That animal cries have a meaning is, therefore, beyond serious doubt; but whether they have, like our simplest words, any definite or unchanging value is still a question, the probable answer being “No,” since a word is the symbol of a thought or an idea; but animals live in a world of emotion, and even our human emotions are mostly dumb or inarticulate. I must give this negative answer, notwithstanding the fact that I have learned to call various birds and beasts, and that I can meet Hotspur’s challenge on hearing Glendower boast that he can call spirits from the vasty deep:

Yes, the birds and beasts will surely come if you know how to give the right call; but I am still doubtful whether among themselves their audible cries are ever quite so intelligible as is their silence.

This question of animal speech has received a different and more positive answer, by the way, from a man who has spent many years in persistent observation of wild apes and monkeys. After watching the lively creatures from his cage in the jungle, attracting them by means of various fruits and recording their jabber in a phonograph, he [12]claims to have discovered the monkey words for food, water, danger and other elementary matters. Moreover, when his phonograph repeats these simian words the monkeys of another locality seem to understand them, since they run to the proper dish at the word “food” or show evident signs of alarm at the word “danger.”

It is doubtless much easier to deny such a conclusion than to prove or disprove it; but denial is commonly the first refuge of ignorance and the last of dogmatism, and with these we are not concerned. I do not know whether Garner claims too much or too little for his monkeys; I have never had opportunity to test the matter in the jungle, and the caged monkeys with which I have occasionally experimented are too debased of habit or too imbecile in their affections to interest one who has long dealt with clean wild brutes. At times, however, when I have watched a monkey with an organ-grinder, I have noticed that the unhappy little beast displays a lively interest in the chitter of chimney-swifts—a lingo which to my dull ears sounds remarkably like monkey-talk. But that is a mere impression, momentary and of little value; while Garner speaks soberly after long and immensely patient observation.

To return to first-hand evidence: among wild creatures of my acquaintance the crows come [13]nearer than any others to something remotely akin to human speech. Several times I have known a tame crow to learn a few of our words and, what is much more significant, to show his superiority over parrots and other mere mimics by using one or more of the words intelligently. There was one crow, for example, that would repeat the word “hungry” in guttural fashion whenever he thought it was time for him to dine. He used this word very frequently when his dinner or supper hour drew nigh, giving me the impression, since he did not confuse it with two other words of his vocabulary, that he associated the word with the notion of food or of eating; and if this impression be true to fact, it indicates more than appears on the surface. We shall come to the wild crows and their “talk” presently; the point here is, that if this bird could use a new human word in association with a primal need, there is nothing to prevent him from using a sound or symbol of his own in the same way. In other words, he must have some small faculty of language.

Another tame crow, which an imaginative boy named Pharaoh Necho because of his hippety-hop walk, proved himself inordinately fond of games, play, social gatherings of every kind. To excitement from any source, whether bird or brute or human, he was as responsive as a weather-vane; [14]but his play ran mostly to mischief, or to something that looked like joking, since he could never see a contemplative cat or a litter of sleepy little pigs without going out of his way to tweak a tail and stir up trouble. At times he would watch, keeping out of sight in a leafy tree or on the roof of the veranda, till Tabby, the house cat, came out and sat looking over the yard, her tail stretched out behind her. If she lay down to sleep, or sat with tail curled snugly around her forepaws, she was never molested; but the moment her tail was out of her sight and mind Necho saw the chance for which he had apparently been waiting. Gliding noiselessly down behind the unconscious cat he would tiptoe up and hammer the projecting tail with his beak. It was a startling blow, and at the loud squall or spitting jump that followed he would fly off, “chuckling” immoderately.

When Necho saw or heard a gang of boys assembled he would neglect even his dinner to join them; and presently, without ever having been taught, he announced himself master of a new art by yelling, “Ya-hoo! Come on!” which was the rallying-cry of the clan in that neighborhood. He said this in ludicrous fashion, but unmistakably to those who knew him. Sometimes he would croak the words softly to himself, as if memorizing them or pleased at the sound; but for the most [15]part he waited till boys were gathering for a swim or a ball game, when he would launch himself into flight and go skimming down the road, whooping out his new cry exultantly. What meaning he attached to the words, whether of boys or fun or mere excitement, I have no means of knowing.

After learning this much of our speech Necho took to the wild, following a call of the blood, I think; for it was springtime when he disappeared, and the crows’ mating clamor sounded from every woodland. These birds are said to kill every member of their tribe who returns to them after living with men, and the saying may have some truth in it. I have noticed that many tame crows are like tame baboons in that they seem mortally afraid of their wild kinsmen; but Necho was apparently an exception. If he had any trouble when first he returned to his flock, the matter was settled without our knowledge, and during the following autumn there was evidence that he was again in good standing. Long afterward, as I roamed the woods, I might hear his lusty “Ya-hoo! Come on!” from where he led a yelling rabble of crows to chivvy a sleeping owl or jeer at a running fox; and occasionally his guttural cry sounded over the tree-tops when I could not see him or know what mischief was afoot. He never [16]returned to the house, and never again joined our play or allowed a boy to come near him.

Not all crows have this “gift of speech”; and the fact that one tame crow learns to use a few English words, while five or six others hold fast to their own lingo, has led to the curious belief that, if you want to make a crow talk, you must split his tongue. How such a belief originated is a mystery; but it was so fixed and so widespread when I was a boy that no sooner was a young crow taken from a nest than jack-knives were sharpened, and the leathery end of the crow’s tongue was solemnly split after grave debate whether a seventh or a third part was the proper medicine. If the crow talked after that, it was proof positive that the belief was true; and if he remained dumb, it was a sign that there was something wrong in the splitting; which is characteristic of a large part of our natural-history reasoning. The debates I have heard or read on the “unanswerable” question of how a chipmunk digs a hole without leaving any earth about the entrance (a question with the simplest kind of an answer) are mostly suggestive of the split-tongue superstition of crow language.

Of the tame crows I have chanced to observe, only a small proportion showed any tendency to repeat words; and these gifted ones are, I judge, [17]the same crows that in a wild state may occasionally be heard whistling like a jay, or “barking” or “hooting” or making some other call which ordinary crows do not or cannot make, and which shows an individual talent of mimicry. This last, which I have repeatedly observed among wild crows, is a very different matter from speech; but from the fact that these mimics learn to use a few English words more or less intelligently one might not be far wrong in concluding that every crow has in his brain a small undeveloped nest of cells corresponding to our “bump” of language.

A closer observation of the wild birds may confirm this possibility. Thus, when you hear a solitary crow in a tree-top crying, “Haw! Haw!” monotonously, dipping his head or flirting his tail every time he repeats it, you may be sure that somewhere within range of his eye or voice a flock of his own kind are on the ground, feeding. That this particular haw is a communication to his fellows, telling them that the sentinel is on watch and all is well, seems to me very probable. There are naturalists, I know, who ingeniously resolve the whole phenomenon into blind chance or accident; but that does not square very well with the intelligence of crow nature as I have observed it; nor does it explain the fact that once, when I avoided the sentinel and crept near enough to [18]shoot two members of the flock he was supposedly guarding, the rest were no sooner out of danger than they whirled upon the recreant and beat him savagely to the ground.

If you are interested enough to approach any crow-sentinel in a casual or indifferent kind of way (he will take alarm if you approach quickly or directly), you must note that his haw changes perceptibly while you are yet far off. It is no longer formal or monotonous; nor is it uttered with the same bodily attitude, as your eyes plainly see. You would pronounce and spell the cry exactly as before (it should be written aw or haw, not caw, for there is no consonant sound in it); but if your ears are keen, they will detect an entirely different accent or inflection, as they detect different accents and meanings when a sailor’s casual or vibrant “Sail ho!” sings down from the crow-nest of a ship. Now run a few steps toward the sentinel, or pretend to hide and creep, and instantly the haw changes again. This time the accent is sharper even to your dull ears; and hardly is the cry uttered when all the crows of the unseen flock whirl into sight, heading swiftly away to the woods and safety.

Apparently, therefore, this simple haw of the crow is like a root word of certain ancient languages, the Chinese, for example, which has several [19]different intonations to express different ideas, but which all sound alike to foreign ears, and which are spelled alike when they appear in foreign print. To judge by the crows’ action, it is certain that their elementary haw has at least three distinct accents to express as many different meanings: one of “all’s well,” another of “watch out,” and a third of “be off!” Moreover, the birds seem to understand these different meanings as clearly as we understand plain English; they feed quietly while haw means one thing, or spring aloft when it means another; and though you watch them a lifetime you will see nothing to indicate that there is any doubt or confusion in their minds as to the sentinel’s message.

Not only the crows, but the wild ducks as well, and the deer and the fox and many other creatures, seem to understand crow-talk perfectly, or at least a part of it which concerns their own welfare. Thus, on the seacoast in winter you hear the crows hawing continually as they follow the tide-line in search of food. For hours this talk goes on, loudly or sleepily, and the wild ducks pay absolutely no attention to it; though they must know well that hungry crows will kill a wounded or careless duck and eat him to the bones whenever they have a chance. Because of this dangerous propensity you would naturally expect the water-fowl [20]to be suspicious of the black freebooter and to be alert when they see or hear him; but no sooner do you begin to hunt with a gun than you learn a thing to make you respect the crow, and perhaps to make you wonder how much or how very little you know of the ways of the wood folk.

Many of the ducks, the black or dusky mallards especially, like to come ashore every day in a secluded spot under the lee of a bank, there to rest or preen or take a quiet nap in company. It is a tempting sight to see a score or a hundred of the splendid birds in a close group, their heads mostly tucked under their wings; but it is practically impossible to stalk them, for the reason that the crows are forever ranging the shore, and a crow never passes a group of sleeping ducks without lifting his flight to take a look over the bank behind them. What his motive is no man can say; we only note that, in effect, he stands sentinel for the ducks against a common enemy, as he habitually does for his own kind. There is no escaping that keen, searching glance of his; he sees you creeping through the beach-grass or hiding behind a bush. He flings out a single haw! with warning, danger, derision in it; and now the same ducks that have heard him all day without concern spring aloft on the instant and head swiftly out to sea.

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The crows have several other variations of the same cry, expressive of other matters, which all the tribe seem to understand clearly, but which are meaningless to human ears. When I imitate the distress-call of a young crow, for example, I can bring a flock over my head at almost any time, the only condition being that I keep well concealed. At the first glimpse of a man in hiding they sheer off, and it is seldom that I can bring them back a second time to the same spot; yet I have a companion, one who utters a call very much like mine to ordinary ears, who can bring the flock back to him even after they have seen him and suffered at his hands. More than once I have stood beside him in the woods and fired a gun repeatedly, killing a crow and scattering the flock pell-mell at every shot; but no sooner does he begin to talk crow-talk than back they come again. What he says to them that I do not or cannot say is something that only the crows understand.

It is commonly assumed that they come to such a call because they hear in it a cry for help from one of their own kind. That is undoubtedly true at times; for a help-call, especially from a cub or nestling, is a summons to which most animals and birds instinctively respond. And, strangely enough, the smaller they are the braver they seem to be. [22]A mother-partridge has more than once flown in my face or beaten me with her wings, while “fierce” hawks, owls and eagles have merely circled around me at a safe distance when I came near their young. In the majority of cases, however, I think that birds come to a distress-call simply because the excitement of an individual spreads to all creatures within sight or hearing, just as a crowd of men or women will become excited and rush to a common center before they know what the stir is all about.

In confirmation of this theory, it is not necessary to cry like a distressed young crow to bring a flock over your head. The imitated hawing of an old crow will do quite as well, if you throw the proper excitement into it. Again, on any summer day you will hear in your own yard the pip-pip of arriving or departing robins. The same call is uttered by both sexes, at all times and in all places; yet if you listen closely you must note that there is immense variety in the accent or inflection of even this simple sound. The call is clear, ringing, joyous when the robins first arrive in the spring; it is subdued when they gather for the autumn flight; it is sleepy or querulous when they stand full-fed by the nest, and most business-like when they launch themselves into flight, which is the moment when you are most sure to hear it. [23]A robin utters this call hundreds of times every day, in one accent or another, and neither the other robins nor their feathered neighbors seem to pay any attention to it; but when a red squirrel comes plundering a nest, and the mother robin sends forth the same pip-pip with a different intonation, then the response is instantaneous. The alarm spreads swiftly over wood and field; clamor uprises, and birds of many species come rushing in from all directions; not because they have heard that Meeko is again killing young robins (at least, it does not seem so to me), but because excitement is afoot, and they are bound to join it or find out about it before they can settle down comfortably to their own affairs.

There is an interesting way by which you may test this contagion of excitement for yourself. Hide at the edge of the woods or in any other bird neighborhood in the early morning, preferably at a season when every nest has eggs or fledglings in it; press two fingers against your lips and draw the breath sharply between them, repeating the squeaky cry as rapidly as possible. The sound has a peculiarly exciting quality even to human ears (twice have I seen men run wildly to answer it), and birds come to it as boys to a fire alarm. In a few moments you may have them streaming in from the four quarters of bird world, all highly [24]excited, and perhaps all ready to protect some innocent nest from snake or crow or squirrel. Because the response is most electric at the season when fledglings are most helpless, you are apt to think that this call of yours is mistaken by mother birds for a cry for help. That may be true; but be not too sure about it. The fledglings themselves will come almost as readily to the call when the nesting season is over and gone.

I have tried that same exciting summons in many places, wild or settled, and commonly but not invariably with the same result, as if it were a word from the universal bird language. Once in a secluded valley of northern Italy I saw a hunter with his gun, and promptly forgot my own errand in order to chum with him and find out what he had learned of the wood folk. He was hunting birds to eat. “Those birds there!” he said, pointing to a passing flock which I did not recognize, but which seemed pitifully small game to me. Presently I learned that he could not shoot flying, and was having such bad luck that, he said, the devil surely had a hand in it. He was a smiling, companionable loafer, and for a time I tagged after him, watching him amusedly as he made careful but vain stalks of little birds that seemed to have been made wild by much hunting. In a spirit of thoughtless curiosity, and perhaps also [25]to test bird nature in a strange land, I invited the hunter to hide with me in a thicket while I gave the call which had so often brought the feathered folk of my own New England woods. At my cry a wisp of birds whirled in to light at the edge of the covert; the Italian’s gun roared; and then I discovered that the wretch was killing skylarks.

I have since had many an uncomfortable moment at the thought of how many lovely songsters may have paid with their lives for that ungodly experiment; for my companion hailed me as a master Nimrod from the New World; and when I refused, on the plea of bad luck, to teach him the call, I heard him give a distressingly good imitation of it. Yet the experiment seemed to prove that everywhere birds quickly catch the contagion of excitement; that in many cases they respond to a call because it stirs their anger or curiosity rather than because it conveys any definite summons for help or warning of danger.

When you open your ears among the beasts you hear precisely the same story; that is, certain cries apparently have definite meaning, like the accented haw of a crow, while others convey and also spread a wild emotion. Of all beasts, the wolves are perhaps the keenest, the most intelligent, and these seem to have definite calls for food or help or hunting or assembly. Such calls are [26]strictly tribal, I think, like the dialects of Indians, since the call of a coyote is quite different from the call of a timber wolf even when both intend to convey the same meaning. A friend of mine, an excellent mimic, who spent many years in the West, has shot more than a score of coyotes after drawing them within range by sending forth the food-call in winter; but though he knows also the food-call of the timber wolf, he has never once deceived these larger brutes by his imitation of it; nor has he ever seen a wolf of one species respond to the food or hunting call of another.

Like most other wild animals, timid or savage, the sensitive wolves all respond, but much more warily than the birds, to almost any inarticulate cry expressive of emotional excitement; just as your dog, who is yesterday’s wolf, grows uneasy when you whine in your nose like a distressed puppy, or leaps up, ready to fly out of door or window, when a wild ki-yi breaks out in the distance. Indeed, it is easier to keep a boy from a fire than a dog from a crowd or excitement of any kind; and the same is true of their wild relatives, though the wariness of the latter keeps them hidden where you cannot follow their action. The greatest commotion I ever witnessed in a timber-wolf pack was occasioned by the moaning howl of a wounded wolf on a frozen lake in midwinter. [27]It was a cry utterly unlike anything I had ever recorded up to that time, and every time they heard it the grim beasts ran wildly here and there, howling like lunatics. Then, when the wounded one grew quiet, they would approach and sniff him all over; after which some would sit on their tails and watch him closely, while others circled about on the ice, using their noses like hounds in search of a lost trail.

Occasionally, when I have had these uncanny brutes near me in the North, I have tried to call them or make them answer by giving what seemed to me a very good imitation of their cries; but seldom has a howl of mine been returned. On the contrary, the brutes almost always stop their howling whenever I begin to talk wolf-talk, as if they were listening and saying, “What under the moon is that now?” Then old Tomah, the Indian, comes out of his blanket and gives a howl exactly like mine, but with something in it which I cannot fathom or master, and instantly from the snow-filled woods comes back the wild wolf answer.

Likewise, I have called moose in many different localities, and am persuaded that it makes very little difference what kind of whine or grunt or bellow you utter, since anything resembling a moose-call will do the trick if you know how to [28]put the proper feeling into your voice. After listening carefully to many callers, I note this characteristic difference: that one man invariably makes the game wary, suspicious, fearful, no matter how finely he calls; while another in the same place, with the same trumpet and apparently with the same call, manages to put something into his voice, something primal, emotional and essentially animal, which brings a bull moose hurriedly to investigate. Thus it happens that the worst caller I ever heard—worst in that he had no sense, no cunning, no knowledge of moose habits, and uttered a blatant, monstrous roar unlike anything a sane man ever heard in the heavens above or the earth beneath—was still the most successful in getting his game into the open. Three nights in succession I heard him call in a region where moose were over-shy from much hunting, and where my own imitation of the animal’s natural voice brought small response. In that time fourteen bulls answered him, all that were within hearing, I think; and every one of the great brutes threw caution to the dogs and came out on the jump.

From such observations, and from others which I have not chronicled, I judge that the higher orders of birds and beasts have a few calls which stand for definite things, or mental images of [29]things, but that their ordinary cries merely project an emotion or excitement in such a way that it stirs a similar emotion in other birds or beasts of the same species; just as the sound of hearty laughter invariably stirs the feeling of mirth in men who hear it, or any inarticulate cry of fear sets human feet in motion—toward the cry if the hearer be brave, or away from it if he be of cowardly disposition. Yet even among men, who by civilization have lost some of their natural virtues, the primal impulse still lives. Like the wolf or the raccoon, the man’s first impulse is to rush to his distressed or excited fellows. If he turns and runs the other way, it means simply that his artificial habit or training has deadened his natural instincts.

In speaking of “man” here I refer to the genus homo, not to the male specimen thereof. Among brutes most of the natural instincts are the same in both sexes; they vary in degree, not in kind, and the instincts of the female are commonly the stronger or keener. Yet I have noticed, or think I have noticed, this difference: when a cry of distress is uttered in the woods, the first bird or beast to appear is almost always a female; but the male is quicker on his toes at a battle-yell or a senseless clamor.

This last is a personal impression, and cannot well be verified. The only record I have which [30]might pass for evidence in the matter comes from my observation of the crows. In the spring many of these questionable birds indulge their taste for eggs or tender flesh and soon become incurable nest-robbers; and for that reason I often shoot them, to save other and more useful birds. The method is very simple: one hides and calls, and takes the crows as they appear in swift flight, the number shot being commonly limited to one or two at a time. And I have observed repeatedly, at different times and in different localities, that when I use the distress-call of a young crow as a decoy, the first to appear over the tree-tops is a female. This is the common rule, with occasional exceptions to point or emphasize it. But whenever I clamor like a crow that has discovered an owl, or send forth a senselessly excited hawing, almost invariably the first crow to come whooping over is a long-winged and glossy old male.

Does it seem to you like thoughtless barbarity on my part to kill crows in this fashion? Perhaps it is barbarous; I do not quite know; but it certainly is not thoughtless. One cannot blame the crows for their taste in eggs or nestlings; but one must note that they destroy an enormous number of insectivorous birds, and that the harm they do in this respect outweighs their usefulness in destroying field-mice and beetles. I write this [31]with regret; for I admire the crow, and consider him as, of all birds, the most intelligent and the most considerate of his own kind. I know that it is a moot question whether the crow does more harm or good, and that some naturalists have settled it in his favor; but I have too often caught him plundering nests in the springtime to be much impressed by his alleged usefulness at other seasons. I think that he may have been once useful in preserving the so-called balance of nature; but that balance is now dangerously unequal. The crow has flourished even in well-settled regions, thanks to his superior wit, while other useful birds have fearfully diminished, and this at a time when our orchards and gardens call more and more insistently for their help. Because of his disproportionate numbers the crow now appears to me, like our destructive and useless cats, as a positive menace in a country where he once occupied a modest or inconspicuous place—such a place as he still occupies in the wilderness, where I meet him but rarely, and where I am glad to leave him in peace, since he does not seriously interfere with his more beautiful or more useful neighbors. But we are wandering from the dim trail of animal communication, which we set out to follow.

The inarticulate but variously accented cries of which we have spoken constitute the only animal [32]language to which our naturalists have thus far paid any attention; and doubtless some of them would object to the use of the word “language” in such a connection. In all matters of real natural history, however (real, that is, in the sense of dealing at first hand with individual birds or beasts), I am much more inclined to listen to old Tomah, who says, when I ask him whether animals can talk: “Talk? Course he kin talk! Eve’ting talk in hees own way. Hear me now make-um dat young owl talk.” And, stepping outside the circle of camp-fire light, Tomah utters a hoot, which is answered at a distance every time he tries it. After parleying with the stranger in this tentative fashion, Tomah sends forth a different call; and immediately, as if in ready acceptance of an invitation, a barred owl glides like a gray shadow into a tree over our heads. I have heard that same old Indian use horned-owl talk, wolf and beaver and woodpecker talk, and several other dialects of the wood folk, in the same fascinating and convincing way.

One must judge, therefore, that most cries of the day or night have their meaning, if only one knows how to hear them; yet they constitute but a part, and probably a very small part, of the animal’s habitual communication with his fellows. The bulk of it appears to be of that silent kind which [33]passed between Don and Nip, and which, I have reason to believe, is the common language of the whole animal kingdom.

To prove such a matter is plainly impossible. Even to investigate it frankly is to enter a shadowy realm between the conscious and subconscious states, where no process can be precisely followed, and where the liability to error is always present. Let us therefore begin on familiar ground by examining certain phenomena which we cannot explain, to be sure, but which have been observed frequently enough to give us confidence that we are dealing with realities. I refer especially to that curious warning or “feeling” of impending danger, which is supposed (erroneously, I think) to depend upon the so-called sixth sense of animals and men.

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