Ok, I know this is pretty unrelated to linguistics, but this behavior from an eel surprised me a lot, so I think it can remind us that animals may be thinking/doing a lot more than we usually assume.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IQ2I-P8Ucw



I actually had an encounter like that with a sea lion once. I was in the Galapagos and was ahead of the rest of the group for snorkeling (they'd stopped at the bathrooms), and there were two sea lions sitting on the dock. They jumped in the water when they saw me, but one stayed pretty close and then once I got in swam up to me and did a few laps around me. I was pretty sure it was just curious and playing, though it definitely had some teeth (so Spanish lobo del mar 'sea wolf' isn't too far off).
I'll attach an image from that, which isn't zoomed in, just of the sea lion swimming around me.


Again, this is off topic, but it does remind me of the prairie dogs video I posted a while ago (can get the link again if someone needs it) and other discussion of surprising animal communication.

It seems like it is more than just hungry-- aware of who this is (I suppose another diver could try out the same strategy to test it) and actually likes interaction? Or maybe just aware that interaction means more fish? But that seems like an odd behavior to guess.

Right. I'm not claiming this is any evidence of communication, just what I think is fairly unexpected behavior. It seems to be behaving more like a cat than an eel. (But I wouldn't say that the way cats act suggests they necessarily 'communicate' in any way beyond other animals.)

In the sense of communication=interaction, this is clearly an example. In the sense of communication=language, this is clearly not an example. Does that clarify?

I agree. But as I said in my first post, this is a bit off topic: I don't mean to make any direct claims about language in this, just that I think it's an interesting video about unexpected behavior from an animal

It might be a multi-dimensional continuum. That's often what "continuum" means anyway (as it is [mis?]used in science), I think. It just means it isn't a strict dichotomy.

So measuring "more" or "less" might not be possible if it's multidimensional. But that doesn't make the gradience any less real.

On the other hand, the fact that we don't have definitions for these things means we can't know either whether there is necessarily gradience or not-- perhaps once defined there will be categorical differences. I doubt it, but we would need definitions to be sure.

Impossible to have a continuum without any idea of what sits at or at least near the edges, relatively speaking.

Not really.

Any continuous dimension — be it definite or indefinite, or even infinite — with an indistinct transition between any arbitrary points can be said to be a continuum, e.g. space-time continuum, dialectal continuum, and so on.

In this case we don't have any definite extents of the continuum, but from observation we can speculate that communication and language is not necessarily a diametrical of (human) communication versus no communication at all, and that there is probably no clear boundaries between the degrees of communication and language.

We may or may not possess such a complex capability for communication that the gap between humans and other animals is notable — I like to use Koko and Kanzi and counterpoints to such a speculation — but even so, it would not negate the observation that communication and language does not seem to be "stepped", but rather a continuum of varying capability.

Since we hardly understand animal communication as it is, it's very difficult to try and categorise different animals by their capability for communication and language, and even as complex as we might think of our human communication, I would dare say that it would be very arrogant to think of our form and state of communication as superior or even more complex ... we simply don't know yet.

However, it would probably be somewhat foolhardy to claim that communication and language is a landscape of peaks and valleys, rather than a continuous slope. Whatever Chomsky and others may say, I find it difficult to believe that our capability for language would have been as abrupt as some make it out to be.

That language itself could have grown non-linearly is nothing I disagree with, but that does not necessitate an equally non-linear growth in our inherent capabilities.

Perhaps that's the problem? The confusion of capability and the emergent expression of said capability?

Since we hardly understand animal communication as it is, it's very difficult to try and categorise different animals by their capability for communication and language, and even as complex as we might think of our human communication, I would dare say that it would be very arrogant to think of our form and state of communication as superior or even more complex ... we simply don't know yet.

Yes, that's my point. It's hard to say which beings have more or less communicative abilities than others. It seems premature and arrogant to posit a continuum, like those medieval chains of being: God-angel-man-mammal-amphibian-fish-insect-plant. Simplistic and anti intellectual. Do bats have more communicative abilities with sonar than ants with pheromones? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.