What I mean is, if you look at the behavior of an animal and ask, "Well, why did it do that?" and then consider the alternatives, those alternatives probably wouldn't be as successful at getting its genes around.

A bunch of individuals do the same thing because they learned from watching each other or somebody else. That's what we would call culture.

Humans are particularly interesting; our culture is incredible, there's no doubt about that. In many respects, no other species matches ours. But in quite a few respects, they do, and that can help us, perhaps, to better understand our own culture. We look at the ways humans are similar to other animals, and at the ways they differ, rather than just saying, "We have culture and you don't."

Quite a lot of what we normally think of as human culture doesn't fit some definition. What are the values behind cuisine, which is a form of human culture? Does it have deep values? I don't know - I would say not. But maybe I'm not a foodie.

I don't think in biology it's very controversial at all. Whether certain behavior is culture or is not culture is argued. I think virtually all biologists would agree that some animal behavior is culture. Bird song is a good example.

Whales are cultural animals, and we're cultural animals, so although we shouldn't expect whales to do what we do, it doesn't seem unreasonable to hypothesize that we might share some of these things.

Conversation with animals could happen, but I think it would be easier for it to happen with creatures we share a bit more with - those that have been bred to interact with us, like dogs or horses, or ones to whom we have a natural evolutionary link, like chimps and other nonhuman apes. I mean, we do communicate with dolphins and whales, but we're not trying to get to the depths of their understandings. I feel that with animals as different from us as the whales and dolphins, it's likely to work better with us just watching them and trying to figure them out.