Animals Communicate Too!

The topic of Samantha Robinson-Adams’s upcoming class on animal communication has been an interest of hers since childhood. As Robinson-Adams, an associate teaching professor and academic advisor, recalls, “I have a memoir book from fourth grade … and it said, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And my answer was I wanted to be an animal teacher. I want to teach people why animals are important, and I want them to be able to write about that and tell other people.” So when the English department invited faculty to propose interdisciplinary courses, she found a chance to realize her childhood aspirations by proposing a linguistics course on animal communication.

Linguistics 1180X, Animal Communication, is on track for its test run in the spring semester of 2026. Considering the deadline for the class to start in January, Robinson-Adams needed to create a proposal with a syllabus and submit it to the relevant committees for review. “Once I collected all the research, which has taken about a year and a half, I sort of created the syllabus and tried to fit everything into the proposal… and as it turned out, things really fit together smoothly… in a 16-week calendar timetable,” she recounts. Along with that, she had to determine the overarching themes and topics for the course. The topics, including humanity’s position relative to wildlife, the importance of biodiversity and conservation, and the ethics of using AI to recreate animal communication, will all be explored throughout the 16-week course showcasing the communication of a variety of animals, such as crows and their use of grammar and syntax and octopi and their ability to send signals via camouflage.

These topics, Robinson-Adams claims, must be discussed in person. The course will not be offered online, but it will be adaptable to changes in class size. A larger class would require quizzes and exams to ensure that students remain on track whereas a smaller class would lend itself more to discussions over the course content. “I’ve kind of set it up to where we could have a cap of 26, like we have in most of our typical English classes, but it could be a larger enrollment,” she explains. “If the university… think[s] that that’s possible, then I’m happy to do it that way.” For either option, however, the final project will remain the same: a research project regarding a species of animal that was not discussed in class in which students will determine how that species communicates and how their findings relate to the course. The project is intended to assist students in comparing different styles of communication.

While Linguistics 1180X has a clear connection to animal sciences, the connection to liberal arts may not be as clear despite the linguistic content including the study of syntax in animal communication. The connection, Robinson-Adams explains, is “critical analysis more than anything else.” She believes that studying the parallels between animal and human communication can help students better identify audience and intent and how those two factors play into more widespread, commonly accepted modes of communication. To Robinson-Adams, communication is deeper than just what people say or write. “We’re trying to describe things to others,” she says, describing the value of a less human-centric course focus. “We’re essentially making sense of the world that we live in. And if that’s the definition of communication that you go with, then we’re all doing that.”

Linguistics 1180X, Animal Communication, will be available for registration in the Spring 2026 semester. In the meantime, Robinson-Adams can be found teaching English 2140 and 3140, Introduction to Technical Communication and Technical Communication, respectively, or English 3020, Business Communication.