human animal communication

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Language development

Dr. C. George Boeree

Language is one of the most amazing things that we are capable of. It may even be that we -- Homo sapiens --are the only creature on the planet that have it. Only the dolphins show any indication of language, although we

are as yet unable to understand them.

We seem to be built to speak and understand language. The specialized areas of the brain, such as Brocas

and Wernickes areas, suggest that genetics provides us with, at very least, the neurological foundations for

language.

Linguistics is, of course, a whole separate subject matter, but it does overlap with psychology quite a bit,

especially in regards to language development in infants and children. The ability young children have of

learning a language -- or even two or three languages simultaneously -- is one of the indications that there is

something special about our brains at that age.

It all begins in infancy. From birth until around 6 months, babies make a great deal of noise. They squeal,

squeak, growl, yell, and give us raspberries. And they coo. Cooing is basically the production of what will later

become vowels (a, e, i, o, and u).

From 6 months to about 10 months, they produce somewhat more complicated sounds called babbling. First,

they practice their vowels more precisely, starting with the round, back vowels (oo, oh, ah...) and working their

way to the unrounded front vowels (ee, eh, ay...). The first consonants are h, m, and b, which can be combined

with the vowels to make syllables. Soon, they add p, t, d, n, w, f, v, and y. A little while later, they add k, g,

and ng.

Then they start adding s and z. It takes a little longer for babies to get sh, ch, j, and the infamous th sounds. Thevery last sounds are l and r. This is why you hear them pronouncing works as oddly as they sometimes do. Fis

does fine for fish, soozies for shoes, Wobbut for Robert, Cawa for Carla, and so on. But keep in mind that theycan perceive far more than they can pronounce -- something appropriately called the fis phenomenon. They

will not be able to say certain words, but they wont put up with you mispronouncing them! One of my

daughters, for example, used the syllable y (with a nasal a) to mean shoe, sock and even chair -- but understood

the difference quite well.

Mothers (and fathers) play a huge part in forming the childs language. Even if we are preprogrammed in

some way to speak language, we need to learn a specific language from the people around us. Mothers typically

adjust their speech to fit the childs level. This is called motherese. It is found in practically every culture on

the planet, and it has certain common characteristics: The sentences are very short, there is a lot of repetition

and redundancy, there is a sing-song quality to it, and it contains many special baby words. It also is

embedded in the context of the immediate surroundings, with constant reference to things nearby and activitiesthat are going on here-and-now.

Motherese often involves a subtle shaping called a protoconversation. Mothers even involve infants who do

little more than coo or babble in protoconversations:

Mother Child (one year old)

Look! (getting child's attention) (the child touches the picture)

What are these? (asking a question) (the child babbles, smiles)

Yes, they are doggies! (naming the object) (the child vocalizes, smiles, looks at mom)

(mom laughes) Yes, doggies! (repeating) (the child vocalizes, smiles)


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(laughs) Yes! (giving feedback) (the child laughs)

Moms also askquestions like where is it? and whats it doing? Any response at all is rewarded with

happiness! Of course, the conversation becomes more meaningful when the child can actually form his or herown words. By 10 months, most kids understand between 5 and 10 words. The fastest 1/4 of them have up to

40 words!

From 12 to 18 months (or thereabouts) is called the one word (or holophrastic) stage. Each word constitutes a

sentence all by itself. By 12 months, most kids can produce 3 or 4 words, and understand 30 to 40. Again, there

are some kids who understand and even use as many as 80! By 14 months, the number of words understood

jumps to 50 to 100, and even the slowest 1/4 know 20 to 50. By 18 months, most kids can produce 25 to 50

words on their own, and understand hundreds.

Two characteristics of this stage are overextension and underextension. For example, the word hat can meanjust about anything that can be put on your head, a goggie applies to just about any animal, and dada (much

to the embarrassment of moms everywhere) pretty much means any man whatsoever. On the other hand,

sometimes kids engage in underextension, meaning that they use a general word to mean one very specific

thing. For example, baba may mean MY bottle and my bottle only, and soozies may mean MY shoes and

no one elses.

There are certain common words that show up in most childrens early vocabularies. In English, they include

mama, daddy, baby, doggy, kitty, duck, milk, cookie, juice, doll, car, ear, eye, nose, hi, bye-bye, no, go, down,

and up. There are also unique words, sometimes actually invented by the child, called idiolects. Identical twins

sometimes invent dozens of words between themselves that no one else understands.

Between 18 to 24 months (approximately), we see the beginnings of two word sentences, and telegraphic

speech. Here are some common examples, showing a variety of grammatical functions taken over by simple

conjunction of the two words:

see doggy, hi milk

that ball, big balldaddy shoe (i.e. daddys shoe), baby shoe (i.e. my shoe)

more cookie, more sing

two shoe, allgone juice (numbers and quantities)

mommy sit, Eve read (subject-verb "sentences")

gimme ball, want more (making a request)

no bed, no wet (negation)

mommy sock (subject-object "sentences," i.e. mommy get my sock)

put book (verb-object "sentences," i.e. you put the book here)

After 24 months, children begin to use grammatical constructions of various sorts. Here are some in their usual

order of development:

I walking (-ingparticiples used as verbs)

in basket, on floor (prepositions)two balls (the plural)

it broke (verbs in an irregular past tense)

Johns ball (possessive s)

There it is (the verb to be)

A book, the ball (articles)

John walked (verbs in the regular past tense)He walks (third person singular of verbs)

She has (irregular third person singular)

It is going (the progressive formation of verbs)

Its there (contractions)

Im walking (complex verbs)

Notice that simple irregular verb tenses learned before regular tenses!

These things are by no means restricted to English, or to any particular language: They are universal. For

example, all children begin with telegraphic sentences:


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Man clean car (The man is cleaning his car)

Obachan atchi itta (Obachan ga atchi e itta, "my aunt went that way," in Japanese)

Articles (in languages that use articles) are learned as a general idea first, and only refined later:

uh = a, the (see uh car?)

uh = un, une, le, la in French

duh = die, der, das, etc. in German

Grammatical gender is not an easy thing to learn, ether. French masculine and feminine words and Germanmasculine, feminine, and neuter words are just a matter of memorization. The same difficulty applies to

different classes of verbs.

Aspect (such as differentiating between things that are done once and for all, and things that are done repeatedly

-- the perfect and the imperfect) is learned before tense (past-present-future). Tense is actually quite difficult,

even though as adults we take it for granted.

There do seem be languages that are easier for children to learn, and others that are more difficult: Some

languages (Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish, for example) use many suffixes to indicate a variety of

grammatical and semantic qualities. These suffixes are very common, complete syllables, and fully regular--and are learned easily and early.

On the other hand, some languages (e.g. Chinese, Indonesian, and to some extent English) prefer to use small

words called particles (e.g. the, of, in, and, and so on). These tend to be learned late, because they have no

meaning of their own and are often unstressed and unclearly pronounced. Notice, for example, that "is" and"not" are often reduced to 's and n't!

A third group -- which contains most European and Semitic languages -- have a mixed system, including lots of

very irregular, unstressed endings and particles. If you recall the effort you put into remembering the Germanarticle or Spanish conjugations or Latin declensions of the nouns, you realize why children have a hard time

learning these things as well.

Language learning doesnt end with two year olds, of course. Three year olds are notorious for something

called over-regularization. Most languages have irregularities, but 3 year olds love rules and will override

some of the irregulars they learned when they were 2, e.g. "I go-ed" instead of I went and "foots" instead of

feet. Three year olds can speak in four word sentences and may have 1000 words at their command.

Four year olds are great askers of questions, and start using a lot of wh- words such as where, what, who, why,

when (learned in that order). They can handle five word sentences, and may have 1500 word vocabularies.

Five year olds make six word sentences (with clauses, no less), and use as many as 2000 words. The first grader

uses up to 6.000 words. And adults may use as many as 25,000 words and recognize up to 50,000 words!

One of the biggest hurdles for children is learning to read and write. In some languages, such as Italian or

Turkish, it is fairly easy: Words are written as they are pronounced, and pronounced as they are written. Other

languages -- Swedish or French, for example -- are not too difficult, because there is a lot of consistency. But

other languages have terribly outdated spelling systems. English is a clear winner among languages that usewestern alphabets. We spend years of education on getting kids to memorize irrational spellings. In Italy, on

the other hand, spelling isn't even recognized as a school subject, and "spelling bees" would be ridiculous!

And then there are languages that don't use alphabets at all: Chinese requires years of memorization of long

lists of symbols. The Japanese actually have four systems that all children need to learn: A large number of

kanji symbols, adopted centuries ago from the Chinese; two different syllabaries (syllable-based "alphabets");and the western alphabet! The Koreans, on the other hand, have their own alphabet with a perfect relationship

of symbol to sound.http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langdev.html

Copyright 2003, C. George Boeree
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langdev.htmlhttp://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langdev.htmlhttp://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langdev.htmlhttp://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langdev.html


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Can humans communicate with animals?byJessika Toothman

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1. Can humans communicate with animals?

2. Communication with Nonprimates?3. Lots More Information

4. See all All About Animals articles

Primate Image Gallery

Kanzi really seems to know his stuff. See morepictures of primates.

AP Photo/Steve Pope

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Koko thegorillawowed the world with her ability to learnsign languageand converse with her

handlers, but not everyone was convinced. Many experts have questioned the validity of Koko's

example, as well as other case studies that test animals' communication abilities and thought

processes. They point to possible flaws in the experiments, such as the potential for rote learning,mimicry, reaction to unconscious cues in the examiners' behavior and assumption on behalf of the
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handlers. Researchers have since worked to counter doubters by conducting further studies in more

controlled conditions.

But putting aside the possibility of error in the testing process, let's look at some interesting cases of

human interactions with animals that, if actually displaying direct communication, could have amazing

implications for our understanding of language and cognition in the animal kingdom. As we go along,

keep in mind that the question of what constitutes communication and when that concept slips into the

realm of actual language isn't so simple.

The case of Kanzi, a bonobo chimpanzee, is one such example. Kanzi lives at the Great Ape Trust

research center near Des Moines, Iowa and has been acquiring communication skills since he was an

infant. At first, psychologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh was trying to teach Kanzi's mother how to use a

special keyboard she'd developed to sidestep some of the control problems that had sparked

controversies after Koko's training. But it proved to be little Kanzi who was picking up the most

knowledge -- and doing it from simply being in the room, not the focus of direct attention.

So Savage-Rumbaugh decided to instruct Kanzi in the same way human children learn to pick up

language skills. The bonobo spent his days engaged in normal activities with adults who spoke to him

and taught him corresponding lexigrams (abstract symbols that represent written words) as the need

for them arose. Kanzi proved an excellent student and an eager participant in daily social interactions,

learning hundreds of lexigrams and understanding thousands of spoken words. And although he,

along with his little sister, Panbanisha, still have their fair share of critics, Savage-Rumbaugh claims

they can also understand grammatical concepts, refer to the past and the future, invent figures of

speech and imagine how the world must seem from another person's point of view.

It appears Kanzi has communication skills about on par with a 2-and-a-half-year-old human, whichmight not seem like much but is far beyond what some thought was possible. But what if we venture

outside the small family of great apes? Can humans communicate with nonprimates? We'll dig into

that idea on the next page.

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communicate-with-animals.htm
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Human-animal communicationFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Human-animal communication is the communication observed between humans and

other animals, from non-verbal cues and vocalizations through to, potentially, the use of

a sophisticated language.

Introduction

Human-animal communication is easily observed in everyday life. The interactions

between pets and their owners, for example, reflect a form of spoken, while not

necessarily verbal dialogue. A dog being scolded does not need to understand every

word of its admonishment, but is able to grasp the message by interpreting cues such as

the owner's stance, tone of voice, andbody language. This communication is two-way,as owners can learn to discern the subtle differences between barks and meows one

hardly has to be a professional animal trainer to tell the difference between the bark of

an angry dog defending its home and the happy bark of the same animal while playing.

Communication (often nonverbal) is also significant inequestrianactivities such

asdressage.

[edit]Word repetition in birds

Although theword repetitionskills observed insome birds(most famouslyparrots)

should not be mistaken for lingual communication, this tendency has nonetheless

influenced fictional portrayals of animal communication, as sentient talking parrots and

similar birds are common in children's fiction, such as the talking, loud-mouth

parrotIagoof Disney'sAladdin.Bruce Thomas Boehner's book Parrot Culture: Our

2,500-Year-Long Fascination with the World's Most Talkative Birdexplores this issue

thoroughly.

[edit]The next level: language

Achieving a deeper level of communication between animals and humans has long beena goal of science. Perhaps the most famous example of recent decades has beenKoko,

a gorilla who is supposedly able to communicate with humans using a system based

onAmerican Sign Languagewith a "vocabulary" of over 1000 words.

[edit]John Lilly and Cetacean Communication

In the 1960s,John Lilly, M.D., prolificwriterand explorer ofconsciousnessvia

theisolation tank(his invention), and contemporary and associate ofTimothy Leary,

began experiments in theVirgin Islandsaiming to establish meaningful communication

between humans and thebottlenose dolphin(Tursiops truncatus). Lilly financed, mostly
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personally, a human-dolphin cohabitat, a house on the ocean's shore that contained an

area that was partially flooded and allowed a human and dolphin to live together in the

same space, sharing meals, play, language lessons, and even sleep.

Two experiments of this sort are explained in detail in Lilly's popular books (seeJohnLillyfor bibliography). The first experiment was more of a test run to check psychological

and other strains on the human and cetacean participants, determining the extent of the

need for other human contact, dry clothing, time alone, and so on. Despite tensions after

several weeks, the experimenter, Margaret C. Howe, agreed to a two-and-a-half month

experiment, living isolated with 'Peter' dolphin.

A basic outline of Peter dolphin's linguistic progress is as follows: early lessons involved

mostly noise and interruptions from Peter during English lessons, and a food reward of

fish was necessary for him to 'attend class.' After several weeks, a concerted effort byPeter to imitate the instructor's speech was evident, and human-like sounds were

apparent, and recorded. More interesting was the dolphin's immediate grasp of

basicsemantics, such as the different aural indicators for 'ball' and 'doll' and other toys

present in the aquarium. Peter was able to perform tasks such as retrieval on the

(aurally) indicated object without fail. Later in the project the dolphin's ability to process

linguisticsyntaxwas made apparent, in that Peter could distinguish between the

commands (e.g., only) "Bring the ball to the doll," and "Bring the doll to the ball." This

ability not only demonstrates the bottlenose dolphin's grasp of basicgrammar, but also

implies the dolphins' own language must include some such syntactical rules. The

correlation between length and 'syllables' (bursts of the dolphin's sound) with the

instructor's speech also went from essentially zero at the beginning of the session to

almost a perfect correlation by its completion. I.e., a sentence spoken by the instructor

involving 35 syllables and lasting 8 seconds would be met with an 8-second burst of

sound from Peter dolphin involving 35 easily-discernible 'syllables' or bursts of sound.

Much later, experiments byLouis Herman, a former collaborator and student of Lilly's,

demonstrated the crossmodal perceptual ability of dolphins. Dolphins typically perceive

their environment through sound waves generated in themelonof their skulls, through a

process known asecholocation(similar to that seen in bats, though the mechanism of

production is different). The dolphin's eyesight however is also fairly good, even by

human standards, and Herman's research found that any object, even of complex and

arbitrary shape, identified either by sight or sound by the dolphin, could later be correctly

identified by the dolphin with the alternate sense modality with almost 100 per cent

accuracy, in what is classically known inpsychologyandbehaviorismas amatch-to-

sample test. The only errors noted were presumed to have been a misunderstanding of

the task during the first few trials, and not an inability of the dolphin's perceptual
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apparatus. This capacity is strong evidence for abstract and conceptual thought in the

dolphin's brain, wherein an idea of the object is stored and understood not merely by its

sensory properties; such abstraction may be argued to be of the same kind as complex

language, mathematics, and art, and implies a potentially very great intelligence and

conceptual understanding within the brains of tursiops and possibly many other

cetaceans. Accordingly, Lilly's interest later shifted towhale songand the possibility of

high intelligence in the brains of largewhales, and Louis Herman's research at the now

misnomeredDolphin InstituteinHonolulu,Hawaii, focuses exclusively on theHumpback

whale.

[edit]Animal communication as entertainment

Poster for Toby the Sapient pig

Though animal communication has always been a topic of public comment and

attention, for a period in history it surpassed this and became sensational popular

entertainment. From the late 18th century through the mid 19th century, a succession of

"learned pigs" and various other animals were displayed to the public in for-profit

performances, boasting the ability to communicate with their owners (often in more than

one language), write, solve math problems, and the like. One poster dated 1817 shows

a group of "Javasparrows" who are advertised as knowing seven languages,

includingChineseandRussian. One pig of the era was so famous that it performed for

royalty, and an obituary upon its death claimed that it made more money than any actor

or actress of the same time; a fact that, whether strictly true, was at least believable to
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contemporary readers. By the late 1840s the fad had died down considerably. While the

occasional appearance by a "learned" animal continued into the radio and television

eras, it was by then generally understood that feats such as using cards to spell words,

barking or tapping a hoof to solve equations, and the like were the products of training

rather than actualcommunication. Though the tradition continues to this day on the

"Stupid Pet Tricks" segment ofLate Night with David Letterman, it seems likely that the

era of trained pigs entertaining the crowned heads of Europe are over.

[edit]BowLingual

Main article:BowLingual

One real-world example of a technological means of one-way human-animal

communication is BowLingual, a Japanese device which claims to translate barks from

dozens of different breeds of dogs, including mixed-breeds. Based largely on Dr.

Matsumi Suzuki's Animal Emotion Analysis System developed at Japan Acoustic

Laboratory, the device outputs one of 200 phrases (grouped into six different moods),

supposedly reflecting "meaning" of the dog's bark. The device was apparently

successful enough in Japan to be brought to the American market, and was even named

one of 2002's best inventions byTime Magazine. However, reports of the BowLingual's

accuracy have been mixed at best, with popular product-review websiteEpinionsgiving it

a low 1.5 stars average.

[edit]Human-animal communication in culture

The concept of human-animal communication has existed in culture for longer than

recorded history, being an element of many myths and folk tales of numerous cultures,

and continues in modern popular entertainment. This section lists some examples of

this, divided by the method of communication (magical/supernatural, innate natural

ability, technological, and unspecified/misc). Topics that are beyond the scope of this

article and will not be listed here include intraspecies communication (e.g.Watership

Down) and interspecies communication not involving humans (e.g.Redwall) or sentient

animals who can think but not communicate with humans (e.g. Garfield; Buck

ofMarried with Children; Blondi ofKingdom Hospital).

[edit]Magic and supernatural

In many fantasyrole playing games,Druidcharacters are able to speak with animals

through the use of a spell. The Dungeons & Dragons version of this spell is called

"Speak with Animals".

Eliza Thornberry of Nickelodeon's animated TV seriesThe Wild Thornberryscan

speak with animals after a spell is placed on her by anAfricantribalshaman.
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In theHarry Potterseries of books, Harry is a parselmouth (able to speak with

snakes in their own language,parseltongue, which sounds like hissing and spitting to

the ears of those without this (apparently hereditary) skill).

InThe Immortalsseries of books,Veralidaine Sarrasri(Daine) has "wild magic"

which enables her to communicate with animals. After being trained in the use of her

wild magic, she learns to enter the minds of animals and shapeshift.

In theObernewtyn Chronicles, some of the characters have the ability to mentally

communicate with animals, an ability known as 'beastspeaking'. All animals have the

same 'language', which comprises of mental pictures.

[edit]Innate ability

Cypher, real name Douglas Ramsey, ofMarvel Comics'The New Mutants, has a

"mutant" ability to instantly translate any language he hears or sees, including animal

languages.

Doctor Dolittle, subject of a series of children's books byHugh Loftingas well as

various film and stage adaptions, is a doctor whose ability to speak with animals

makes him successful in dealing with animals but closes him off from most humans.

[edit]Technological

InStar Trek, the communicator badges worn by Starfleet crew members allow direct

translation between humans and various sentient and semi-sentient aliens and

creatures, though it is undetermined whether they work with "dumb" animals. It is

presumed that this is not possible, as the relatively few domesticated animals seen

on the show do not appear to converse with their owners (Data's cat, and Archer's

beagle, for example). The council-chamber of theXindiaccommodates her Aquatic

members in a water-tank.

In issue 285 of DC'sDetective Comics,Martian Manhunterfights a brigade of

"Martianmandrills" which were being manipulated by villains through the use of a

communicator device stolen from the mandrills' rocket. On the television cartoonKrypto the Superdog, Krypto has an "intergalactic

communicator" device in his dog tag, which allowsKevin Whitneyto communicate

with him. The device is technology fromKrypton,Superman's homeworld.

In the anime,Immortal Grand Prix(IGPX), Team Satomi's Midfielder, Amy, uses a

machine to communicate with her cat, Luca, while racing with him in her mech. The

same can be said for Team Edgeraid's Forward, Bjorn, and his dog, Sola.
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[edit]Unspecified and miscellaneous

InHerg'sTintincomics,Tintin's dogSnowyis sentient and able to "think". Although

his thoughts are written in word bubbles rather than thought bubbles, it is generally

assumed that the human characters cannot understand him. Once, in the early

volumeTintin in America, Tintin was able to directly understand Snowy. Herg did

not elaborate on why this was so; presumably it was used simply to advance the plot

and not to bog down the story with a "talking dog" element.

The American television showMr. Edcenters around a horse's ability to

communicate with his owner, Wilbur. The plot of this television series was inspired by

the movie characterFrancis the Talking Mule.

[edit]

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How to Communicate with Animals

by Dawn Baumann BrunkeThere are many ways we can tap into our natural abilities to

communicate with animals. No matter which method you choose,however, it all boils down to one thing: relationship. Any form ofmeaningful communication involves relating to others (as well asourselves) in an honest and authentic manner. One wonderful benefit tocommunicating with animals is that it requires us to feel our deeperrelationship with all life and share ourselves from that connected state ofawareness.

As we open to the energy that flows through all life, we open ourselves toinstant relationship. We know that we share a common awareness, for we

feel it moving through us, connecting us with every other living being.Our ancestors embraced this connection and communicated fluently withthe natural world. We also carry this ability within ourselves.Remembering it is simply a matter of shifting perspective, deepening,and tuning our consciousness.

Different Ways to Sense the World

Llama, dolphin, eagle, cat; human, salmon, whale and rat: underneathour fur or feathers, skin or scales, we are all composed of the same

universal essence. Still, obviously, we are different. Among the 1.5million species on earth, each of us has a unique vibration in form. Ourperceptions of the world are unique as well, based on our sensingmechanisms (fingers, whiskers, trunks, antennae) and the ways we usethose sensing mechanisms to know the world.

Many animals have completely different sensing mechanisms than we do.Consider the bats ability to echolocate; the squids undulating propulsionsystem that powers it through water; the snails intimate sensing of the

world through the length of its body. Part of the adventure incommunicating with other beings is learning how to open our feelings,thoughts and senses in ways that can be mutually understood.

So, How Does It Work?

As we relax into a quieter, more tranquil state of being, our logical mindslows down. Our habitual ways of seeing the world shake loose and webecome more receptive to perceiving in different ways. As rigid thoughtsof how reality should be release their hold, we shift to a more intuitive

state of being, one that is quite naturally capable of telepathy.


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The word telepathycomes from tele, meaning distant or far away,andpathy, meaning feeling or perception. Telepathy is feeling from adistance, or perceiving from far away. It transcends the way we normallyunderstand time and space. With telepathy, we can expand our

awareness to connect on inner levels with any other being. Withtelepathy, we rediscover our fluency in the universal language.

We can receive telepathic information from animals in many differentways. This may include visual images (pictures or movies within the innertheatre of the mind); inner feelings (an ache in the body that correspondsto an animals body, or sensing emotional feelings, such as fear orexcitement); inner hearing (what an animal is hearing, or hearing ananimals thoughts within the mind); or intuitive flashes (a suddenknowing). We must then translate these inner impressions in ways that

we (and other humans) can understand.

Many people discover that they have a preference for one mode overanother. If you are very visual, you might get a lot of pictures, and youmay want to practice sending images in return. If you like to talk andshare ideas, you might sense an inner translation of words and sentencesthat resembles a dialogue. Over time and with practice, you mightstrengthen all modes and discover that you enjoy communicating in avariety of ways.

The Basics: Four Easy Steps

The basics of communicating with animals are not that different thancommunicating with people: you share an interesting thought orobservation and await a response. This may excite you to share somethingelse and listen eagerly to a reply. And so it goes, back and forth, anexchange of information, ideas, thoughts, laughter, sadness, joy anddelight. What could be more natural?

1. AttuningAttuning is about moving deeper in relationship, intimately feeling thebonds connecting you and your animal friend. To begin, get comfortablein a quiet place. Close your eyes, breathe deep and allow the center ofyour being your heart, your mind, your soul to connect with youranimal. Feel your animal connecting to you. Sense the flow between thetwo of you. Dont force the situation; rather, let it unfold. Your only goalis to quiet yourself and welcome the adventure.

2. Stating your Intention

As you sense a deeper connection, address your animal directly, just asyou would a good friend. You can use words (Id like to talk to you) or


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images (picture yourself conversing) or feelings (feel your desire tocommunicate). Or, use all three (say it, picture it, sense it). In truth, itdoesnt matter so much what you do or how you do it since this isntabout doing, but about being. Allow yourself to be in that place that

genuinely desires to connect. It may help to first express your feelings Im nervous about this, but Id really like to talk to you. Or, you mightask a question: Is there anything I can do for you? Whats it like to be you(a dog, a cat, a horse)? Do you have a message for me?

3. ReceivingHeres where you let go of everything and open up wide for the answer tocome. Let go of all your thoughts about what could happen or mighthappen.Sshhh how can you hear when you are listening to doubts orplanning what to ask next? Be open, relaxed and receptive. Welcome any

and all feelings, sensations, images, words, smells, tastes or combinationsthereof. Dont judge what you get or wonder if it is right. It is what itis! Allow the full message to come to you before you send a secondmessage.

4. Closing, Giving ThanksAs my wise, old dog Barney used to say, Good manners never go out ofstyle. Offer warm feelings and thanks as you end your conversation. Bythanking your animal, you acknowledge your appreciation and make firstcontact something you can build upon. Remember to thank yourself too!Thank your intuition and desire to connect with life in a deeper and moremeaningful way. Even if you dont sense anything, thank your animal andyourself for a very good start. Really mean it, too, because although itmay seem that what you are doing is little, what you are being is deepand expansive and very great indeed.

Sharing the MysteryEvery conversation, just like every relationship, is about sharing our owninimitable take on the mystery of life. There is no one way for

everyone. There is no right way either. We each need to find whatworks for us.

As you continue to tune into animals, remember that the universallanguage is one we already know and share with all life. Since it has beenawhile that humans have used this language in a conscious way, we are alittle out of practice. So be kind to yourself. And celebrate yourself, forin learning how to remember, you are helping the entire world toremember too!

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