Thanks, Susan! I like my theory pretty well myself.

It is a pet theory, but I haven't come up with a name for her yet.

But she is housebroken... hhhmmm... Maybe I'll name her Rambles. ;-)

I came to the conclusion that language itself is not exclusively human one day while I was waiting for a ride to show up. I heard a crow cawing somewhere overhead, and tried to spot the particular bird, just as an excerise. When I pinpointed the location, however, I discovered it was not a crow, but a pair of mocking birds, who were in the process of dive-bombing a crow perched nearby (who was silent).

They were using the crow's own call to tell the crow to get the $#%^~*#%! out of their territory.

They were using a specific signal for a specific audience. If that doesn't qualify as at least some sort of proto-languange, I don't know what does!

I never really bought that language is exclusively human, anyway. But witnessing that clinched it.

...And ever since then, I've thought of "mocking" birds as "translator" birds *BG*