| Study Questions Ways Animals Communicate |
| 1. Choose two animals and describe a scenario when you might hear the sound. |
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| 2. Identify whether the following examples are visual, auditory, tactile, or chemical methods of communication:
1) ants following the same path to carry food from a picnic basket back to their colony
2) a peacock proudly displaying its feathers
3) the chirp of a cricket
4) shaking hands with someone you just met
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| 3. Imagine you own a cat and return from a vacation to find your cat annoyed and upset that you were gone. How would you expect your cat to behave when it sees you? How might it express itself through body language? |
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| 4. How would knowledge of the courtship dance of the bird of paradise encourage conservation and the preservation of biodiversity? |
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| 5. Do you think the sound of a frog pond in a city park would differ from that in a quiet rural setting? |
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| 6. What type of dance would you expect a bee to perform if it returns to the hive in the morning to recruit other workers to a field of clover 50 yards to the west of the hive? |
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| 7. Can you come up with a hypothesis as to why the honeybees are disappearing? |
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| 8. Humans can change their color easily by changing their clothes. Give an example of an outfit you might wear in order to communicate something. |
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| 9. Choose a marine mammal and listen to the sound. Give an example of what that sound might represent if you heard it at home or at school. |
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| 10. Why would studying animals’ sounds with computers provide important additional information for studying animal communication? |
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| 11. Why would chemical communication be more useful than other methods for ant foraging? |
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| 12. How do you think separating a baby primate from its mother affects the research on primate communication? |
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| 13. Do you believe it is ethical to use primates as subjects for communications research? |
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| 14. Use words that you know Koko can sign to create a new sentence. |
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| 15. Considering the words that Koko knows and uses, do you think that Koko has the ability to express feelings and emotions? Why? |
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| 16. How does the robot expand the ability of the cockroach to communicate with its surroundings? |
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