So cuttlefish have some kind of rudimentary(?) language that has a gestural component. Or, if you don’t want to call it language, they communicate with each other, in part, through gesturing with their arms. (Not sure how a consistent system of signs isn’t a language but I’m not a linguist). Anyway, there is a tank of cuttlefish at the New England aquarium. Usually, the animals totally ignore the visitors. Once when I was there with a friend, the cuttlefish were signing to each other. My friend held his hand up to the glass and began to imitate their gestures with his fingers, and then made a sequence of random signs. The cuttlefish became extremely agitated and signed furiously at him and rapidly flashed different colors, and we will never know what he accidentally said to them. The moral of this story is actually that it’s fucked up how we keep sentient and sensitive beings in a weird little fish jail.
After knowing a few different swan families for two years, we learned some of the sign language they use for “Hello friend! (You know me)” and “Sorry.” Their vocalizations are a little difficult to mimic, but “Hello friend!” and “sorry” are gestures done with the head. There’s also “Hey! Hey! (come start a fight)” which, in a human, involves hands and arms. You can actually get into a feedback loop saying “Hello friend” to friendly swans that actually know you, where you say it and then they get excited and say it back, and then you say it again and they feel like they have to respond. And if you meet a strange swan and they behave aggressively towards you, you can get them to calm down and even say “sorry” by telling them that you know them. This is often easy to lie to them about, since swans think all humans look very similar.
Anyway! It is extremely funny because when humans walking outside encounter a swan, the humans often say “Hey! Hey!” in Swan, and when the swan puffs up and says “Excuse me?” the human says “Come start a fight!” and the swan, particularly if it’s defending a nest, is like “Fine. Okay. I’ll end this.”
And then the human complains that swans are awfully Hostile and Aggressive.
/linguist mode on/ sticking my nose in briefly to say that a consistent system of signs used for communication is definitely a language /linguist mode off/
@yuri-puppies
this seems like useful info for anyone writing sci-fi/fantasy and trying to think about how non-human languages might look!
I kind of want to know what “hello friend” and “sorry” look like in swan language now. Just in case. I have heard that crows have a really complex system of verbal communication that really does verge on true language, complete with regional dialects! Also @linddzz perhaps you would like to weigh in on cuttlefish language?
They definitely use their arms for language and if you can figure out some of the patterns, you can kinda communicate with them. The ones that were easiest to ID with the species I worked with (sepia officianalis, pharaonis, and bandensis) were the calm neutral face where all their tentacles are relaxed and hanging down and one where they raise their top two smaller tentacles as a general aggression gesture.
I put the neutral look as a communication gesture because they would definitely respond if you mimicked it with your hand. One of the best ways we found to calm down the cuttles when you had to get into their tank was to hold your hand up in the “calm” gesture.
The other one seemed to be more of a general aggression thing that had a few variations for different scenarios. Raised up and slightly hooked with a black face and pulsing colors on the body was what I call the “YOU WANNA GO???!?!?!” The intensity of the display seemed to coincide with how pissed they are. If the two tentacles were raised without much curl and slight to mild color-pulsing, it seemed to be more of a cautious “woah hey are we cool?” thing. Displaying males would also flatten their other tentacles out in a spade shape to make themselves look bigger while flashing their stripes. And if you went up to the tank and held two fingers up the cuttle would almost always do it back and get all riled up because SOMEONE WANTS TO FIGHT.
Another interesting thing, if you raised your fingers up without curling them, and waved them side to side, some cuttles would get pissed but others would wave their top two tentacles back at you without the angry colors. I don’t know if it actually meant anything or if they were just mimicking it back at us. Either way it was interesting how reactions to that one varied more.
So if OP’s friend in the random gesturing ever raised up two fingers, that’s most likely what got the cuttles all agitated because some rando showed up and started talking shit.
Nice now I know how to piss off a cuttlefish.
Do the cuttlefish equivalent of walking up and flipping them off
i got so excited the first time i read this thread that i just shouted “bird” at the computer and windmilled my arms
because swans are probably more coherent than me
