What do animal signals mean?

Abstract

Animal communication studies often use analogies to human language and related constructs such as information encoding and transfer. This commonality is evident even when research goals are very different, for example when primate vocalizations are proposed to have word-like meaning, or sexually selected signals are proposed to convey information about a signaller's underlying quality. We consider some of the ambiguities and limitations inherent in such informational approaches to animal communication as background to advocating alternatives. The alternatives eschew language-based metaphors and broader informational constructs and focus instead on concrete details of signal design as they reflect and interact with established sensory, physiological and psychological processes that support signalling and responding in listeners. The alternatives we advocate also explicitly acknowledge the different roles and often divergent interests of signallers and perceivers that can yield fundamental asymmetries in signalling interactions, and they therefore shift the focus of interpretations of animal communication from informing others to influencing others.