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Alex studies: Cognitive and communicative abilities of grey parrots, The
Pepperberg, Irene Maxine
Can a parrot understand complex concepts and mean what it says? Since the early 1900s, most studies on animal-human communication have focused on great apes and a few cetacean species. Birds were rarely used in similar studies on the grounds that they were merely talented mimics--that they were, after all, "birdbrains."

Animal Behavior
Drickamer, Lee C. , Vessey, Stephen H. , Jakob, Elizabeth
This one-semester text is designed for your upper- level course and features chapter coverage that has been completely reorganized to promote a more logical framework for study.

Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach
Alcock, John
The book shows how evolutionary biologists analyze all aspects of behavior. It is distinguished by its balanced treatment of both the underlying mechanisms and evolutionary causes of behavior, and stresses the utility of evolutionary theory in unifying the different behavioral disciplines.

Animal cognition in nature: the convergence of psychology and biology in laboratory and field.
Balda, Russell P. , Pepperberg, Irene M. , Kamil, Alan C.
In this book, the editors bring together results from studies on all kinds of animals to show how thinking on many behaviors as truly cognitive processes can help us to understand the biology involved. Taking ideas and observations from the while range of research into animal behavior leads to unexpected and stimulating ideas.

Animal consciousness
Radner, Daisie , Radner, Michael
Any intelligent debate on the ethical treatment of animals hinges on understanding their mental processes. The idea that consciousness in animals is beyond comprehension is usually traced to the 17th-century philosopher Rene Descartes whose concept of animals as beast machines lacking consciousness influenced arguments for more than 200 years. But in reviewing Descartes' theory of mind, Daisie and Michael Radner demonstrate in Animal Consciousness that he did not hold the view so frequently attributed to him. In fact, they contend that Descartes distinguished two types of consciousness, which make it easier to discuss the conscious experiences of animals and to trace the debate into the post-Darwinian era.

Animal talk: Science and the voices of nature
Morton, Eugene S. , Jake Page, Morton
Concepts in verbal and nonverbal animal communication.

Animal Vocal Communication: A New Approach
Owings, Donald Henry , Morton, Eugene S.
Animal Vocal Communication explicitly avoids human-centered concepts and approaches and links communication to fundamental biological processes instead. Written by a psychologist and a zoologist, it offers a new conceptual framework--assessment/management--that integrates detailed studies of communication with an understanding of evolutionary perspectives. The authors describe animals as managers, attempting to get other animals to behave in ways beneficial to the managing animal; and as assessors, behaving in their own interests that may or may not be in the interests of the manager. The authors contend that it is this interplay between management and assessment that results in the functioning and evolution of animal communication; it is what communicative behavior accomplishes that is important, not what information is conveyed.

Ape language: From conditioned response to symbol
Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S.
Traces the acquisition of symbols in two chimpanzees from simplest beginnings to their complex use as representational statements of future actions. This process has not previously been clearly documented in a nonhuman primate.

Apes, language, and the human mind.
Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue , Shanker, Stuart G. , Taylor, Talbot J.
Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi's acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child.

Aping language
Wallman, Joel
This book is a critique of the experiments of recent years that tried to teach language to apes. The achievements of these animals are compared with the natural development of language, both spoken and signed forms, in children. It is argued that the apes in these studies acquired merely crude simulations of language rather than language itself and that there is no good evidence that apes can acquire a language. A survey of the communication systems of apes and monkeys in nature finds that these systems differ from language in profound ways--language is a uniquely human attribute. Product Details

Design of Animal Communication, The
Hauser, Marc D. , Konishi, Mark
Based on the approach laid out in the 1950s by Nobel laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen, this book looks at animal communication from the four perspectives of mechanisms, ontogeny, function, and phylogeny.

Doctor Dolittle’s delusion: Animals and the uniqueness of human language
Anderson, Stephen R
Dr. Dolittle had it wrong, says the author of this fascinating book: animals cannot use language. Stephen Anderson explains the difference between communication and language and shows that animals do not have the cognitive capacities necessary to acquire language.

Dynamic Dance: Nonvocal Communication in African Great Apes, The
King, Barbara J.
In this eye-opening book, we see precisely how such events unfold in chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas: through a spontaneous, mutually choreographed dance of actions, gestures, and vocalizations in which social partners create meaning and come to understand each other.

Education of Koko, The
Patterson, Francine , Linden, Eugene
Synopsis unavailable

Evolution of Communication, The
Hauser, Marc D
Bound to become a classic and to stimulate debate and research, The Evolution of Communication looks at species in their natural environments as a way to begin to understand what the real units of analysis of communicating systems are, using arguments about design and function to illuminate both the origin and subsequent evolution of each system. It lights the way for a research program that seriously addresses the problem of how communication systems, including language, have been designed over the course of evolution.

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