This is But Why? A podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public.

I'm Jane Lindholm.

On this show, we take questions from cool kids like you about pretty much anything,

and we find answers.

If you have a question, stick around and we'll tell you how to send one in at the end of the episode.

We've gotten literally thousands of questions, and many of them are about animals. If we could

answer one animal question a day, every day, you'd turn into an adult before we had answered them all. Melody and I love animals, too,

so we're always happy to see another animal question come in, and it's not surprising that all

of us are so curious about animals. After all, we're animals, but we've evolved so differently

from other animals, and there are so many different varieties of animals that we share the planet with.

Plus, animals do amazing things.

Some fly, others can hop higher than they are tall.

Lots of them breathe underwater or burrow underground.

But there's one thing we do that no other animals seems to do in quite the same way.

I'm six years old and I live in Brisbane, Australia, and I want to know why animals can't talk.

That's Rory. Well, no, that's a Hirax. And I don't know its name. Rory was the human asking the question before we heard the Hirax. Do you know what a Hirex is? It's a small, brown, furry mammal about the size of a rabbit. Actually, some people think hyraxes look kind of like rabbits,

just with no ears or tails. They live in Africa, and while they're not going to say hello to you,

they certainly make a lot of noise. But are they talking? We're going to explore that idea today

with someone who studies the ways animals communicate.

My name's Eric Kirshenbaum. I'm a zoologist at the University of Cambridge.

Do animals have language? And do they communicate and are those the same thing?

Well, they're not the same thing. Communication is not the same as language.

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