Animals like to yak to one another too, say scientists

FROM elephants to frogs to fireflies, it seems everyone wants to chat.

Two-way conversations — once thought of as uniquely human — are common across the animal kingdom, say scientists.

The whistles of dolphins, low rumbling of elephants, soft chirps of naked mole rats and “rapping” of clawed frogs might be somewhat lost in translation.

But according to a new review of scientific evidence they all follow the turn-taking rules of human conversation.

Researchers from the UK and Germany found animal communication was still not well understood despite studies of birds dating back 50 years.

Lack of data and, ironically, poor communication between scientists had hampered direct comparisons between different species.

The authors of the new study highlighted timing as a key feature of communicative turn-taking in both humans and animals.

Some species were impatient chatterers, certain songbirds waiting less than 50 milliseconds to “reply” during a conversation.

At the other end of the scale, slow-talking sperm whales exchanged clicks with a gap of about two seconds between turns.

Humans lay somewhere in between, typically pausing for about 200 milliseconds before responding in a two-way conversation.