Animal talk
Have you ever seen bees dancing, gorillas sticking out their tongues or horses rubbing noses? Well, you might be surprised to learn that these are not simply things they do to 0) entertain themselves or visitors at the zoo! They are actually very important 1) means of communication. So, how exactly do animals use the different senses in order to speak to one another?

SMELL. The sense of smell is the most basic way in which even the simplest of creatures communicate. Many animals, including humans, 2) release scents to attract others to them for reproduction, to keep 3) predators or to attract prey, whereas others, such as ants, leave scents to show others where to find food. Sometimes, how these scents are detected can be quite incredible.’ Snakes, for example, use their tongues to pick up scent in the air, whereas sharks can detect blood in the ocean about one mile away!

SIGHT. Many animals 4) make wide use of body language in order to get their message 5) across. A female rabbit, for example, shows the white underside of her tail to tell her young to follow her to the safety of the burrow. In the same 6) way bees perform a complicated dance to communicate the direction and distance of a food 7) source while a blowfish blows up like a balloon to scare away predators. Meanwhile, gorillas stick out their tongues to show anger!

TOUCH. It's not just humans that 8) shake hands when they meet - chimpanzees also greet one another by touching hands. Other animals use the sense of touch in order to show their feelings 9) towards one another. To show affection, for example, elephants link their trunks necks together, while horses rub noses and giraffes press their necks together.

SOUND. We’ve all enjoyed waking 10) up to the lovely sound of birds singing, but birds are not the only animals that use the sense of sound to communicate. The world’s largest mammal, the whale, for example, has a complicated repertoire of low-frequency songs to communicate to others where they are and where there is food, sometimes 11) over hundreds of kilometres. In fact, all sorts of animals use sound to speak in different ways. Elephants, for instance, trumpet in 12) moments of excitement or danger, male grasshoppers rub their hind legs over their wings to attract females and snakes and crocodiles hiss loudly to ward off intruders.