• Question: could anyone put a human and voice box into a cat or dog so that they could talk

    Asked by diddykong to Alex, Ali, Kerry, Philip, Theo on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Kerry O'Shea

      Kerry O'Shea answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      I don’t think putting a human voice box into a cat or dog would suddenly allow them to speak to you, the voice box is purely there to create sounds. Cats and dogs would still have to know the English language to be able to speak it. Our brains send the right signals to our mouths to make the words come out correctly. I think speech is a very complex thing, and I’m not an expert!

    • Photo: Philip Ratcliffe

      Philip Ratcliffe answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Putting a human AND voice box into a cat or dog, might be tough: the human wouldn’t fit ;^)
      The voice box would though, but it’d be like giving a pencil to a monkey and hoping it might write you a love letter.
      Animals don’t have the neural connections to formulate sentences (even though they might recognise single spoken words).

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