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Why can’t animals talk?
Many animals are able to communicate with each other very well but none of them can talk as we do. That is, no animals use words.
Birds cry out and make sounds that other birds understand. Smells, movements, sounds are used to communicate by animals, and they can express joy, anger or fear.
But human speech is a very complicated process, and no animals are able to perform it. One reason is the very special way we have to use a whole series of organs to produce the sounds we want to make when we utter words. The way our vocal cords are made to vibrate, the way the throat, mouth and nasal cavities have to be adjusted, the way the lips, teeth, lower jaw, tongue and palate have to be moved — just to make a vowel and consonant sounds — is something animals cannot do. They cannot produce a whole series of words to make a sentence.
And there is another, perhaps a more important, reason why animals cannot talk. Words are only labels for objects, actions, feelings, experiences, and ideas. For example the word “bird” is a label for a living, flying object. Other words describe its colour, shape, flying, and singing. Yet more words would be used to tell what the speaker thinks or feels about the bird or its actions.
So the use of words means the use of labels or symbols and then organizing them in a certain way to communicate something. This requires a degree of intelligence that no animals have. So they can’t “talk” the way people do. It’s how nature has meant it to be. And we just have to accept it.
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