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The Rhetorical Animal

· 2 min read
Adam Kecskes
Adam Kecskes
Speaking Coach & Leadership Advisor

As I ponder the possibility of writing a book on public speaking and the social value of rhetoric in human society, my mind wandered over to the animal kingdom as a whole.

Do animals engage in rhetoric? What are the implications of that in terms of animals studies? We're prone, as humans, to anthropomorphize every critter out there. What can we learn from this contrast? (heads up, I'm not even going to try and answer this question... sorry to disappoint, but it's a MASSIVE topic to delve into, but I will talk a little about Koko the gorilla and her kittens.

In this quick read with cute pictures (https://www.koko.org/koko%27s-kittens) at the Gorilla Foundation, the author mentions how Koko "convinced" the caretakers to let her have a kitten. They eventually acquiesced and over the decades, Koko was the proud parent of several kittens (gorillas are long lived like we are, so they outlive many animals the same way we do).

That opens up the semantical question of, "Is 'convincing' the same as 'persuading'?" With enough persistence, a child can convince their mother to buy them a toy by emotional wearing them down. Is this what Koko did? In this particular case, I'm going to presume that the caretakers were more interested in the research implications of how a gorilla and a cat might live together, giving them greater insight into gorilla psychology. Gorillas and chimps are our closest genetic relatives, so we could learn a lot about ourselves as well.

And in comparison, maybe we could learn about our own psychology when it comes to persuading each other.

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