Why were no other animals evolved to be able to use spoken language? Would neanderthals have been able to speak?

>>14912012 (OP)

Animals CAN communicate with humans, they just don't do so verbally. Its pretty easy for a dog to tell you what they're thinking based on their body language, whether or not they want food, attention, for you to open a door for them.etc



The thing is that animals don't really need to know how to speak verbally, and to think they should is just anthrocentric thinking. Humans evolved to develop verbal communication because it was an effective way for our soft weak bodies to survive and cooperate while hunting on the African plains



Not only this, but animals DO speak in a manner entirely befitting to them.



Rid yourself of the anthropocentric tendency, brother.

>>14912012 (OP)

>Would neanderthals have been able to speak?

Yes, but their language probably wasnt as complex as homo sapien ones

https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2007.177

>Rid yourself of the anthropocentric tendency, brother.

the article is paywalled but let me summarise:

Neanderthals had FOXP2 gene which works as a transcriber. This gene not only linked to birds' ability to mimic sounds but also are responsible for human language development (Lai CS, Fisher SE, Hurst JA, Vargha-Khadem F, Monaco AP (October 2001). "A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder". Nature. 413 (6855): 519–23.). Neanderthals having implies that neanderthals could and probably did developed a language.

>>14912012 (OP)

Why would they evolve to have spoken language if they evolved to speak in other ways? This is like asking why didn’t humans evolved to speak like monkies or whales. What an absurd and SILLY question to ask.

>>14912012 (OP)

Speech is a function of abstract thinking (IE, equating two non related concepts as the same thing, a sound and a meaning). Humans simply have a more developed ability at abstract thinking and thus our communication is more complex. There are plenty of other animals that communicate with sounds, dolphins, whales, certain species of birds, all come to mind as having nearly human speech levels of audio communication. Humans merely use speech because it happens that our mouths and vocal chords are the easiest way for us to make all kinds of sounds. Our distant primate ancestors evolved vocal chords in order to communicate with sound because it was a strong adaption and increased the chances of survival. Animals may not specifically use speech, but they make use of whatever sound making method is available to them in order to communicate with sounds. Even really dumb animals communicate at least on some level via sound, even the smallest rodents.



The point is, animals almost universally develop the ability to communicate via sound to some degree because it improves chances at survival. The more intelligence you have, the more sounds you can make. At some point in intellectual evolution humans began abstracting meanings to sounds in order to encode information. Simple as.



Tl;dr, audio communication is natural for many animals and greater intelligence leads to more complex and abstract audio communication.
