Speak With Animals - Can Animals Initiate Communication?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Xplo

Nonsense. There's no reason to assume that small animals would speak loudly. There's also no reason to assume that animals speak in a constant stream-of-consciousness babble. There might be a buzz of conversation, but it wouldn't necessarily be a "cacophony".

...

Boosting every animal's communication to human audible ranges would result in thousands if not tens of thousands of loud voices all within a city block.
If you don't call that a cacophony, then you must not believe that concept exists.
Again, though, this assumes an unreasonably realistic interpretation of an obviously magical ability.

[quarkstomper]

Polynesia the Parrot informs us that much of Animal Languages constist of gesture and non-verbal elements, so that understanding the language of an animal is highly dependent on being a good noticer.

"Well," said the parrot, "I don't suppose you have really missed much—to judge from what I have seen of school-boys. But listen: are you a good noticer?—Do you notice things well? I mean, for instance, supposing you saw two cock-starlings on an apple-tree, and you only took one good look at them—would you be able to tell one from the other if you saw them again the next day?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never tried."

"Well that," said Polynesia, brushing some crumbs off the corner of the table with her left foot—"that is what you call powers of observation—noticing the small things about birds and animals: the way they walk and move their heads and flip their wings; the way they sniff the air and twitch their whiskers and wiggle their tails. You have to notice all those little things if you want to learn animal language. For you see, lots of the animals hardly talk at all with their tongues; they use their breath or their tails or their feet instead. That is because many of them, in the olden days when lions and tigers were more plentiful, were afraid to make a noise for fear the savage creatures heard them. Birds, of course, didn't care; for they always had wings to fly away with. But that is the first thing to remember: being a good noticer is terribly important in learning animal language."

"It sounds pretty hard," I said.

"You'll have to be very patient," said Polynesia. "It takes a long time to say even a few words properly. But if you come here often I'll give you a few lessons myself. And once you get started you'll be surprised how fast you get on. It would indeed be a good thing if you could learn. Because then you could do some of the work for the Doctor—I mean the easier work, like bandaging and giving pills. Yes, yes, that's a good idea of mine. 'Twould be a great thing if the poor man could get some help—and some rest. It is a scandal the way he works. I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to help him a great deal—That is, if you are really interested in animals."

-- The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Boosting every animal's communication to human audible ranges

is not, AFAIK, provided or implied by the spell, except to the minimal necessary dramatic extent. So there's no reason why you wouldn't have to hold, say, a tiny frog up near your ear to hold a comfortable conversation.

thousands if not tens of thousands of loud voices all within a city block

Tens of thousands of potential voices. I don't babble continuously; do you?

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Azrael

This may be a stupid question, but does a character using Speak with Animals have to initiate contact with an animal to speak with it? Or can animals begin speaking with the character on their own initiative (assuming it is a social animal and wants to communicate)? I think it would be interesting narratively if animals could initiate communication as well. Also, Could the character pick up on communication between two or more animals without talking to them?

It would certainly be consistent with mythological and fictional sources for animals to be able to initiate communication, or for the character to listen in on conversations between animals. For example, when Sigfried gained the ability to understand the speech of birds after tasting the blood from Fafnir's cooked heart, he was immediately able to overhear birds discussing how his tutor, Regin, planned to murder him. He didn't have to ask the birds "Hey, Birds, what's going on?"

Luke

[Gedrin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Is your cat unusually dumb, or did you forget that R.A.W. puts most cats at IQ 4, not 3?

My cat is unusually dumb.

[Kromm]

The answers are very setting-dependent. Some settings will treat Speak with Animals as a simple vocal/aural capability, and delve into the issues of frequency, volume, and animal intelligence; the advantage may not be worth the price there, and while animals might initiate communication, it will be one-way (e.g., the dog barks, "Get lost! Get lost! Get lost!"). Most settings where this trait exists tacitly assume that it's a fantastic gift tied to magic, telepathy, or whatever. In that case, details will depend on whether the ability works on the animal's level (in which case a beast will communicate or not based on its traditional personality in that game world; e.g., foxes are sly and ants are industrious) or if the background assumes that animals are as smart as people but misunderstood (in which case the advantage always has the Sapience enhancement, and the GM assesses willingness to initiate communication the same way as for any NPC). It isn't rare for a setting to assume that some animals can talk and others can't; this might be species-wide (certain species communicate, the rest are "dumb animals") or individual (Disney's Goofy and Pluto are both dogs, yet . . .). There's no rules-mandated, one-size-fits-all answer.

[simply Nathan]

Sometimes I consider simply treating it as a Spoken language that can be learned with certain supernatural prerequisites (or not); written form requires a Perk to write and Discriminatory Smell to read, competence at which comes from knowing the language to begin with.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Sometimes I consider simply treating it as a Spoken language that can be learned with certain supernatural prerequisites (or not); written form requires a Perk to write and Discriminatory Smell to read, competence at which comes from knowing the language to begin with.

Don't forget that while human written language is entirely sound based, not involving "recently invented" sign languages, much of our communication is visual and even a hint olfactory.
I can imagine sapient creatures with senses equal to cats and dogs using a limited sound only based writing. It would just involve lots of circumlocutions and metaphorical short hands.

I find scratch and sniff books a bit silly, not to mention the fact that we can't make complex ones now.