Zoosemiotics is a branch of semiotics that studies the sign behavior of animals.
It originates from the ethological school of psychology, which examines animal behavior as a chain of semiotic acts.
According to ethologists, animals recognize their environment and orient themselves by “signs.”
The more complex the organism, the greater the importance of its ability to “read” the natural signs in the surrounding environment.
Animals possess an innate ability to recognize objects important for the survival of their species and themselves: enemies, food, and individuals of the opposite sex. Recognition always occurs based on a small number of elementary distinctive (differential) signs through which the animal distinguishes an object or a series of objects from its ‘external world’.
Besides orienting within their environment, animals use sign behavior for communication as well. Lotman believes that:
significant behavior has a ritualized character: hunting, fighting between males, selecting a leader, and other significant moments of behavior are shaped into a complex system of ‘correct,’ i.e., meaningful and understandable, gestures and poses for both the actor and their partner.
All meaningful types of behavior have a dialogic nature.
Through a system of gestures, animals inform each other about their ‘rights’ to a given space, their strength, their hunger, whether they intend to fight, etc.
Some animal species have well-developed sign systems for communication.
There is a significant amount of research on the communication of bees, termites, monkeys, dolphins, and certain bird species.
Scientists increasingly believe that the semiotic behavior of animals is social and resembles the ritualization of social norms in human society.
The benefit of zoosemiotics is described by Umberto Eco as follows:
Zoosemiotics deals with the communicative ways of behavior in non-human communities and, therefore, not with ‘cultural’ ways of behavior.
However, through the study of animal communication, it is possible to define the biological and natural components of human communication or also acquire knowledge that, to some extent, can be defined as ‘cultural’ and ‘social.’
This expands the semiotic scope of these terms and, consequently, our concept of culture and society.
