I feel a song coming on ... Paul Starosta/Stone via Getty images Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. Why don’t female crickets chirp? – Avery, age 8, Los Angeles Insects communicate in lots of different ways, for many reasons. Some, such as butterflies and beetles, use color, patterns and other visual cues to attract mates or warn potential predators that they don’t taste very good. Others, like fireflies, use bioluminescence – light that they produce in their bodies – to attra ..read more

Chickens are vibrant communicators. (Shutterstock) Have you ever wondered what chickens are talking about? Chickens are quite the communicators — their clucks, squawks and purrs are not just random sounds but a complex language system. These sounds are their way of interacting with the world and expressing joy, fear and social cues to one another. Like humans, the “language” of chickens varies with age, environment and surprisingly, domestication, giving us insights into their social structures and behaviours. Understanding these vocalizations can transform our approach to poultry farming, enh ..read more

Shutterstock Is your dog bothered by something but you can’t work out what? Do you wish they could tell you? There’s a huge range of dog “talking” buttons on the market that now claim to let your dog do this. A very basic kit will set you back about $15, while more sophisticated ones can cost hundreds of dollars. But is there any evidence these products work? How the buttons work The idea behind these buttons is simple. You record yourself speaking a word such as “treat” or “outside” into each button, after which the word is played back each time the button is pressed. Your dog can supposedly ..read more

Shutterstock Dogs have been part of human social groups for at least 30,000 years. So it’s not unreasonable to suppose that we might have had some influence on their behaviour, and perhaps their understanding, during that time. We certainly know that dogs have developed ways to communicate with us, for example by whining when they are distressed or barking to alert us to intruders. Many dog owners would probably say their pets can even tell us things using facial expressions, just like humans do. But is that really true? Perhaps they are just showing emotion without meaning to communicate (ju ..read more

Ants from different colonies will fight based on smell alone. Joseph Howell, Vanderbilt University, CC BY-ND Ants can be found in nearly every location on Earth, with rough estimates suggesting there are over 10 quadrillion individuals – that is a 1 followed by 16 zeroes, or about 1 million ants per person. Ants are among the most biologically successful animals on the planet. A surprising part of their evolutionary success is the amazing sense of smell that lets them recognize, communicate and cooperate with one another. Ants live in complex colonies, sometimes referred to as nests, that are ..read more

A honeybee is performing the waggle dance in the center of this photo to communicate the location of a rich nectar source to its nestmates. Heather Broccard-Bell, CC BY-ND The Greek historian Herodotus reported over 2,000 years ago on a misguided forbidden experiment in which two children were prevented from hearing human speech so that a king could discover the true, unlearned language of human beings. Scientists now know that human language requires social learning and interaction with other people, a property shared with multiple animal languages. But why should humans and other animals nee ..read more

Who's a clever boy then? D Coetzee/Flickr, CC BY-SA Many animals – including seals, dolphins and bats – are able to communicate vocally. However, parrots are among a select few that can spontaneously imitate members of another species. A study has now pinpointed the region in the brain that may be allowing this to happen – the region that is also involved in controlling movement. The finding could perhaps also explain the fact that parrots, just like humans, can talk and dance. We know that birds that can sing, including parrots, have distinct centres in their brain supporting vocalisations, c ..read more

The coquí frog, *Eleutherodactylus coqui*, is loud enough to wake people at night. Éktor/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND In the cloud forests of South America, amid the constant cacophony of bird and insect noise, a deafening blare pierces through the background from time to time. Belonging to the loudest known bird, the white bellbird, Procnias albus, this sound would be painful to humans listening nearby and capable of causing immediate hearing damage from about a yard away. Listen to the world’s loudest bird call. Made exclusively by males serenading females, these vocalizations can reach peak levels ..read more

Scientist and seal, under the Antarctic ice. McMurdo Oceanographic Observatory, CC BY-ND Divers inside the shelter hut prepare to drop into the ocean. McMurdo Oceanographic Observatory, CC BY-ND I’m sitting on the edge of a hole drilled through 15 feet of Antarctic sea ice, about to descend into the frigid ocean of the southernmost dive site in the world. I wear nearly 100 pounds of gear – a drysuit and gloves, multiple layers of insulation, scuba tank and regulators, lights, equipment, fins and over 40 pounds of lead to counteract all that added buoyancy. I do a final check with my dive buddi ..read more

'Hey everybody, there's big news happening over here!' Wesley Martinez Da Costa/EyeEm via Getty Images Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. When dogs bark, do they have words? – Sarah W., age 9, Clinton, New York Does your dog bark a lot? Or is he one of those quiet pooches who barks only when things get really exciting? Most dogs bark at least a little. Dog barks are not words. But although your dog will never tell you about his parents or the weather or the amazing bone he had ..read more