How to talk to animals
This week’s question comes to us from Betsy Streeter:
If animals could speak human language or humans could speak animal language, which animals do you think you could have the most interesting conversations with?
TL;DR: Crows. 100%.
This answer came to me embarrassingly quickly. So instead of spending a lot of time thinking of different animals, and possibly creating a talking animal spreadsheet, complete with audio files of their various calls, barks, etc, and wondering how they would translate to human speech (I must also admit that I immediately went with the “animals must learn how to talk to me” option. I have no defense for this.), I instead spent a lot of time wondering how crows came to me so easily. Surely, other animals had something to offer.
So let’s look at some of the animals I took off the table:
Dogs. I love dogs. I especially love my dog. Humans have an incredibly special relationship with dogs, and ultimately I didn’t want to fuck that up. I have a pretty good idea what my dog is trying to tell me, and I’m scared that if we could clearly communicate with one another I’d find out that I was wrong this whole time. That would be brutal. Plus, deep down we all know that dogs are just a little bit racist, I couldn’t deal with actually confirming that.
Cows. This would be the most awkward fucking conversation of all time. The shit we do to cows?
Cats. It is a fact that all cats hate us.
Rats. How much do you really want to know about what rats are up to? Just the infrastructure alone should shame us. We think we do civic planning? We do not. Not at this scale. Plus the idea of sitting on the toilet and hearing a little voice go “You should get that looked at.”?!? (You know they’re down there. Also, half of you are reading this on the toilet right now. Well, were.)
Horses. Really looking forward to a conversation about how our ancestors implicated their ancestors in a genocide. Cool cool cool.
Dolphins. Dolphins are not what your hippie Aunt Brenda told you they are. They’re the marine equivalent of JD Vance on bathsalts going hawk tuah on your grandmother’s plastic-covered loveseat before cushion porking it.
Etc etc.
This, of course, left me with crows. An animal that we more or less have a parallel existence with. We do our shit. They do their shit. We mostly leave each other alone. Maybe once in a while they grab some crops, but Americans waste a lot of food while letting other people around the world go hungry, so who are the real assholes here?
Also, I think I could have really good conversations with crows. I see them as equals. Animals I could plot with. Animals I could build an alliance with.
Top five things I imagine a crow might tell me:
“We’re all headed over to shit on your neighbor’s stupid new Cybertruck. You in?” (I obviously would be.)
“I will fuck up your neighbor’s Ring camera in exchange for some fries.” (I would absolutely do this. My neighbor installed a Ring camera last week that screams YOU ARE BEING RECORDED every time I walk by their door, which is two feet from the sidewalk.)
“There is a cop car parked right around the corner. Be cool.” (ACAB also means All Crows Are Beautiful.)
“I cannot believe that we got saddled with the collective noun of murder. I mean, have you people seen yourselves? Are you aware of how you behave? We feed and look out for each other. We look out for one another’s kids. But you? Lordy.” (100%.)
“WTF was season three of The Bear about?” (I do not know, crow.)
This was a good question.
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