The great question of unquestioning animals

Had an interesting conversation with my son David (no, that’s a complete coincidence: we didn’t meet until he was nine and I was 28, by which time we’d both been called David for nine and 28 years respectively) (yes, yes, he’s my stepson really, but the distinction’s not really worth making: I got to do the important part of his rearing, like teaching him to do the washing up, and he learned really crucial things from me, like doing the washing up is a lot less painful than the consequences of not doing it).

Is that all clear now? Can I get on with the story?

Anyway, it’s been a while since either of us was either nine or 28. In fact, it’s about 38 years. And for a long time now, he’s been teaching me at least as much as I’ve taught him. Fortunately, he’s tended to focus on subjects of more interest and less tedium than washing up.

The latest concerned animals learning language. He’d recently heard a podcast on the subject, from The Infinite Monkey Cage.

David. One of the philosophers
I'm privileged to have as sons

We’ve taught certain animals quite a lot of language. I remember reading some years ago about a Chimpanzee who’d mastered 800 words. Not using voice, of course, but sign language. It had learned words such as ‘ice’ and ‘box’ and had revealed a creative streak when it combined them into ‘icebox’ for refrigerator; ‘water’ and ‘bird’ it combined into a single word for a duck. Pretty smart stuff, don’t you agree? OK, sonnets will have to wait for a while, but still not bad, I reckon.

“Ah,” David told me, “but what the podcast was telling me was that the animals never learned to ask questions.”

Now, that had me fascinated. Is that really what separates humanity from other animals. Is it our capacity to think in terms of “what?” or “when?” or even more important “why?” To say nothing of “what the hell?”

We’re always questioning things, aren’t we? As Edward Fitzgerald put it, in his original masterpiece that he insisted was nothing but a “translation” of Omar Khayyam’s Rubayiat:

Into this Universe, and why not knowing, 
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing; 
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, 
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

We’re constantly concerned about where we came from, and where we’re going to, and why. Other animals sensibly focus on whether they’re comfortable now, in which case they enjoy it, or not, in which case they go somewhere else. And where they’re going to find food. Or possibly sex. But without asking “why?”

Still. At least David and I had some fun trying to imagine the kind of questions other animals might ask us if they ever asked any at all.

Such as:

“What makes you think learning to speak is such a big deal anyway?”

Or

“Why the hell do you want to train me to ask questions? Do you think you’re likely to have any satisfactory answers?”

Though the one we preferred was:

“Is there any way I can ask you without offence to just fuck off, leave me alone, and let me get back to the peace I was enjoying before you came along and disturbed my tranquillity with all this nonsense about speech and questions?”

Sorry about the bad language. I can’t help feeling it probably best expresses the way other animals would think about our obsession with teaching them things.

If they ever bothered to think about it at all, that is.