I want to credit this to Steven Pinker but I'm not certain... He had a great metaphor for this phenomenon of people perceiving human linguistic capabilities in animals: imagine if some elephant scientists were looking at various species' noses, they'd be saying, "look at how they can wiggle their nose! That's just astounding! And this one can balance a ball on his nose! It's uncanny how elephant he is!"
The point being that our ability for language is biologically a very unique facility, even if it can sometimes sound like more ordinary non-linguistic communication. And it's not uncommon in nature for a species to have a very highly evolved capability, at the same time, it takes evolution to make that happen. No amount of stretching, for instance, is going to give you a giraffe's neck.
The point being that our ability for language is biologically a very unique facility, even if it can sometimes sound like more ordinary non-linguistic communication. And it's not uncommon in nature for a species to have a very highly evolved capability, at the same time, it takes evolution to make that happen. No amount of stretching, for instance, is going to give you a giraffe's neck.