Man finds living together with his own species (物种) difficult enough and living together with other species almost impossible. Our usual solution is to kill off anything that get in our way. Even on those rare occasions when we do enter a relationship with other species, it is heavily biased (带有倾向) in our favor. The other species benefit only when they suit our own interests. Our attempts to communicate with another species are concerned mainly with giving orders in our own language and having them obeyed. Probably our best attempt has been the whistle language that is used in the shepherd-sheepdog relationship. This is a system that is natural to neither species, but one that both can under stand. Its only fault lies in fact that the bias is still there—the dog cannot whistle for the man. But now comes news of a piece of research that promises for the first time, to open up two-way communication between man and another species. At the University of Nevada in the western United States, animated (活跃的) conversations are being held with a young female chimpanzee (黑猩猩) called Washoe. Allen and Beatrice Gardener have succeeded in doing this because they have used an entirely new approach, an approach based on the natural abilities of the champanzee. Past attempts to communicate with chimpanzees have failed because the researchers tried to make their animals use a local language.

According to the writer, we communicate with animals in an attempt to ______.