**1. Introduction**

One of the more interesting issues of trying to describe and understand the behaviour and, even more important, the communicative messages of animals is the need for capturing the meaning of the messages in whole before analysing them in their constitutive parts. The process, from a scientific point of view as well as from a layman's point of view, implies the capability of observation in detail and as a whole, and also the capability of a certain empathy for the animal we are observing. This empathy is, obviously, helped by the higher proximity we have with the organism we are trying to understand, and this proximity depends not only in our proximate relationship with them in the zoological scale or 'tree', but also in the similarity of the communication channels we use to exchange signals (or information):

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Cognitivism

p. vii

*Cognitive and Intermedial Semiotics*

New York: Dover; 1955

1972:155-195

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the more channels we have in common, the more opportunities we have to grasp the sense of the communicative signals emitted by the observed organism.

When we do this kind of analysis with the goal of understanding the behaviour of an organism, or more specifically its communication signals, we tend to use an approach that could be identified with the hermeneutics of text analysis. We use an approach similar to that of the hermeneutic circle, in the sense that we try to understand the behaviour or signal as a whole in relation to its constituent parts, and the parts in relation to the whole. It seems to me that, in doing so, we use an interpretive (hermeneutic) approach, closely related with narrative analysis, more than a mathematical approach. This is probably due to the fact that we are trying to understand the meaning of a behavioural chain of acts or signals, and not the mechanics of the chain construction itself. Indeed, the mechanics of chain construction should (and probably will) be influenced by the meaning-making process involved in the process of chain construction, because of an issue of order: the need for building a clear succession of behavioural units or information elements constructing meaning that constrains the possibilities of sequential ordering, because in general no aleatory order is good for the task. If it is mathematically true that an equal probability in occurrence of signals can deliver the maximal quantity of information in a communication (at least, in a binary system), biological entities tend to favour construction rules and redundancy to ensure communicating the needed message and meaning against 'noise' [1].

Interpreting a sequence of behavioural acts is a process closely related, if not the same, to interpreting signals, even if the behavioural sequence is not communicative in itself, at least in the 'intentional' sense. The fact is that we humans (and more specifically, scientists), 'read' the sequence from an outsider position, trying to interpret it and to understand the 'story' the animal is telling with its behaviour. In doing so, scientists could be (and in many ways are) assisted by mathematical tools and technical devices helping our analysis capabilities, but the ultimate resource is our brain and our interpretive methods. This view is supported by Cognitive Linguistics, as the discipline assumes that our interactions with the world are mediated through the use of informational structures in the mind [2].

Even if it has been proposed that there are two different modes of thought—a narrative one directed to think about human action, and a paradigmatic mode to think about natural science and mechanisms—we know that scientists are not restricted to think about problems using only mathematics, experiments and diagrams, but that they also use narratives [3]. Understanding a story implies to examine the possible planning processes running under the story backwards, trying to find explanations about the agent's goals and plans for actions and events that we can identify in the story [3]. Indeed, as animals are far from being optimal, mathematical models of optimality are not always very useful for the task of extracting meaning from a chain of behaviour (and its context of production) and, at the same time, for evaluating the cognitive capabilities of the organisms using those signals.

I think that, in essence, when we humans interpret or read a behavioural sequence or signal from an animal of other species, in fact we try to extract meaning of those sequences in the same way as when we read a story or watch someone performing a narration. We mostly evaluate the meaning of the behavioural acts disregarding any considerations about the physical ways of the narration or their physiological characteristics; we try to understand, and also to extrapolate into the future the information gathered as a way to predict future behaviours of the subject(s). Probably many animals do the same in their heads. Those behavioural chains we read as signal sequences are what I call behavioural narratives or stories, and once they are interpreted, compared and systematized, we can say we have read evolutionary stories.

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advantage over the receiver.

is high [5].

*'Evolutionary Stories': Narratives as Evolutionary Tools to Describe and Analyse Animal…*

**2. Narrative analysis as a parallel way to interpret behaviour**

Thus, the goal of this chapter is to think about our ways to tackle the analysis of behavioural chains, and to show how, when doing this kind of analysis, we are nearer to a narrative analysis than to a 'hard science' mathematical approach. As I said before, we are in fact discovering or telling 'evolutionary stories', and working

Barthes [4] proposed a method of analysis of narratives considering the sequential analysis of narrated actions and/or facts, and thought to be used into film or literary analysis fields. Briefly, the proposed analytic method was presented as the structural study of a narration—series of sentences—in order to describe it as a system of meanings, and revealing the narration from two points of view: the story, through an examination of the logic of actions and their sequential order or syntax, and the modes and times of the narration (the discourse). To understand a narration implies the (witnessed) unfolding of a story, in our case a behavioural or evolutionary story, but also the recognition of a narrative sequence, and to travel

In her book about narrative analysis, Kohler Riessman [5] proposes four possible modes or approaches to the analysis: thematic analysis, structural analysis, interac-

Thematic analysis puts its emphasis on the content of a text (message), on what

Structural analysis of narratives puts emphasis in the ways a story is told. Even if thematic content is not disregarded, focus is put equally on the form or in which narrative devices a 'storyteller' uses and how the narrative is achieved. In this type of analysis, the importance of language (or signalling) and its referential content

Interactional analysis emphasizes the analysis of the dialogic process between teller and listener (emitter and receiver) [5]. This kind of narrative analysis is specially suited for situations in which the 'storyteller' and the 'questioner' participate in a conversational type of exchange while constructing a narrative. While there is no dismissal of thematic content or narrative structure in this approach, the emphasis is put on storytelling as a process of co-construction [5], creating meaning in collaboration between teller and listener (that could, obviously, exchange places). In animal communication, this approach could be paralleled to the study of duetting, both in song or sound emissions as well as in visual display exchanges in sequence or chains [6], or even in communication through choruses. All these processes can enhance information transfer and meaning-making in animal signals. Performative analysis [5] goes beyond interactional analysis, and the exchange is seen as a performance, as a narrative praxis that could be interpreted as a form of social action. This view is suggested by Kohler Riessman [5] as appropriate for studying communication practices and for detailed studies of identity construction. In humans, this can be applied to theatre and their ways of narrative, but trying to devise a parallel use of the concept in animal communication, it can be thought that this kind of 'identity construction' could be utilized by emitters while cheating, in the sense that they are 'performing' to try to convince receivers of some lines of action or situation evaluations that are not 'real', allowing the emitter to take

As Kohler Riessman [5] says in her paper, structural analysis approaches need

the examination of syntactic and prosodic features, thus this is not a type of analysis suitable for large numbers of data but very useful for detailed case studies

is told, and mostly uses a typology of narratives organized by theme [5].

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89209*

with its semantics, pragmatics and syntax.

between the levels of story and discourse.

tional analysis and performative analysis.

#### *'Evolutionary Stories': Narratives as Evolutionary Tools to Describe and Analyse Animal… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89209*

Thus, the goal of this chapter is to think about our ways to tackle the analysis of behavioural chains, and to show how, when doing this kind of analysis, we are nearer to a narrative analysis than to a 'hard science' mathematical approach. As I said before, we are in fact discovering or telling 'evolutionary stories', and working with its semantics, pragmatics and syntax.
