Animals | Animal Communications | Body Language
Can You Master the Only Language Shared by Animals and Humans?
It’s body language. And animals understand it better than we do.
Fluently reading and reacting to animal body language is the secret shared by horse and dog trainers labeled “whisperers”. Body language is a common communication denominator between animals and humans. Mastering the nuances of this non-verbal lingo — both yours and your pet’s — can put your communications with animals on steroids.
Body language is a constantly changing composite of facial expressions, eye movements, breathing, posture, arms, legs, hands, and just about every other body part. Highly mobile parts like noses, tongues, ears, and tails give animals a larger vocabulary than humans.
Animals are very, very good at reading body language. In the wild, their life depends on correctly predicting the intention of an approaching animal. Observing and interpreting body language is their default communications setting.
Speech is the human default communication setting. When we talk face-to-face, our body language is part of the conversation. When we talk on our phones, we disconnect from that communication level and rely on nuances of vocal intonation. We get multiple degrees of separation from face-to-face communication when we use written words sent by text or email from our computers and electronic devices. We go a step farther when we substitute emojis for words.
Try telling your dog to sit by pointing to an emoji on your phone. Any wonder we are not as tuned into body language as animals?
Actually, dogs are smart enough to understand that a specific picture means a particular action. People teach their dogs to spell words or identify particular objects to demonstrate their brilliance. Think your dog is smart because she understands the meaning of 20 words? A border collie named Chaser made her way in a psychology journal with a vocabulary of over 1000 words.
A German horse named Clever Hans showed off his mathematical skills to admiring crowds in the early 1900s. A group of trainers and scholars studied how Hans came up with his correct answers. They concluded that Hans’s real skill wasn’t understanding numbers. His genius lay in accurately interpreting micro-movements in the facial expressions and body language of his owner and the crowds around him.
Animals pay extremely close attention to human body language to predict what we want or will do next. Many humans, on the other hand, are close to clueless about what dog body language is saying or of what their own body language says to their dog. Or their horse. Or their cat.
My deep dive into understanding animal body language started after reading Norwegian dog training expert Turid Rugaas’ book On Talking Terms with Dogs: Calming Signals. Rugass describes how dogs use certain body language when they want another dog to calm down. She explains how people can mimic these canine behaviors to help a stressed dog.
Not many days later, I knocked on a neighbor’s door. A large bully breed dog scrambled over, deep barks erupting from his chest. A little scary. OK, I thought, let’s see if this works. I took my eyes off the dog, turned sideways…and feigned a HUGE, long, drawn-out yawn.
The dog calmed down, stopped barking, sat, and just watched me. And immediately I was hooked on learning this new skill.
Closely observe the nuanced signals animals constantly offer us. Learn to spot and interpret these physical messages. Become aware of how your body language communicates to animals. Build a vocabulary of these nuances.
You’ll be able to direct in whispers instead of reacting with shouts. Attention to body language can transform your relationship with your animals.
© Bonnie Kreitler 2021. All rights reserved.
Writer Bonnie Kreitler creates content to help fellow animal addicts build rewarding relationships with the critters in their lives. See more at www.ramblingdog.com
