Toshitaka Suzuki, an animal linguist and associate professor at the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on October 27th. He spoke about the fact that great tits have language and the influence they received from their parents.
Suzuki spends 10 months of the year in Karuizawa's national forests, researching the meanings conveyed by the calls and gestures of great tits. "We've come to understand that they use a variety of different sounds to form a variety of words." For example, "peetsupi" means "be on guard," "jijijiji" means "gather around," "jaja" means "snake," and "hihihi" means "hawk." "No one realized they had so many different words and used so many different calls. I found this fascinating and continued researching, and before I knew it, this year marks my 20th year," he reveals.
It was discovered that great tits can also combine words to form sentences. "For the first time, we have discovered that animals also have the ability to combine words and form sentences," "What's more, words have a word order," and "We are beginning to understand that there are grammatical rules." Based on this research, animal linguistics is being advocated to the world. Animal researchers are beginning to seriously study the languages of various animals.
From a young age, he loved observing fish, insects and other creatures. "I was interested in how the world looked from the perspective of different creatures," he says. He was born in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, but moved to Koga City, Ibaraki Prefecture, when he was three years old. His father worked in Marunouchi, Tokyo, but moved to the mountains, where he cycled 30 minutes to the station and then commuted two hours from there to work, making for a five-hour round trip commute every day. "This was the trigger that made me even more interested in observing living things," he recalls.
There are words he still remembers. A large spider called an orb-weaver spider was building a web in the garden, and while he was observing it, a rhinoceros beetle got caught in it and was eaten. The illustrated book he was reading at the time said that rhinoceros beetles are the strongest of all insects, and can beat any other insect. "My mother told me, 'Then rewrite the illustrated book.' That stuck in my mind, and ever since then I've started writing down what I've observed in the illustrated book with a ballpoint pen. I think it's connected to what I'm doing now," he recalled. "I'm now realizing that it's okay to rewrite what we know about academia, and I think it's because of my mother's words."
