From NICHOLAS ALBERY
I have no difficulty in accepting Donald Griffin’s theories of ‘intentional
communication’ by animals where behaviourists see only ‘involuntary responses
to internal states’ (‘I buzz therefore I think’, 15 January). I am writing
a guide book to Gomera Island (near Teneriffe) at present, and the Gomeran
whistling language still used by older people there sounds to the observer
like a simple response to a chirpy mood, but is in fact conveying quite
complex information from one mountain-top to another, such as ‘meet you
for a drink at 12 in the piazza’.
Nicholas Albery Institute for Social Inventions London
