Can Animals Understand Sign Language?

Animals are pretty clever, and they’ve been trained throughout history to serve in various roles. From sniffer dogs, to guide animals, to support pets, animals can understand a lot more than we give them credit for. But what about sign language?

The Long and Short of It

As far as we can tell, yes, animals can be trained to understand sign language, to some extent. There isn’t much qualitatively different between written and gesticular language, so if an animal has the capacity to learn bits of spoken language, sign language should be as easy.

Granted, as most pet owners can attest, not every animal is created equal. While some animals, like German Shepherds and Border Collies, are excellent learners, others aren’t.

Koko the Gorilla

One of the most famous examples of an animal learning sign language was Koko the Gorilla. At just one year old, Koko began learning symbols and over the next four decades, she would go on to be able to identify over 1000 symbols.

She could communicate her wants, reply to questions, and even seemed to understand displacement – that is, being able to refer to objects that are not directly around. Not something most animals can do, or even be taught to do.

Washoe the Chimp

Washoe has gone down in history as the first non-human to be taught American Sign Language. Over her life, she acquired over 350 signs,m and reportedly even taught her son some of these. The approach to this experiment was to give Washoe a language-learning experience as close as possible to what a human baby would get. So, Washoe was treated in many ways like a human baby in order to create the ideal environment for her language learning. Washoe was given toys, dolls, and clothes, and she learned to use them all as a regular child would. It’s noted that when new students would meet with Washoe, the chimp would slow down her signing if she noticed that the humans were new to sign language. That had to hurt.

Is There Hope for My Cat?

Well, maybe. However, you would need to start teaching your pet sign language at a very young age and be prepared to stick to it for, say, the next three decades. So, understandably this isn’t a task that most people are up to, and neither are most household pets. For the meantime, you’ll have to be content with them yapping at you to replenish their food bowl, just the way you’re used to.