Is any animal other than humans able to communicate with others in order to differentiate between various fruits, other animals, trees, places, etc.? How about using proper nouns?

Another one from Quora. I'm giving a thought about deleting my stuff from that site, and keeping it only her, or just let it in both places.

Here the subject is animal comunication. And the sense of the answer is, well, stop thinking we are so different and special that there is no other critter that can do similar things to what we do. Enjoy...
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Animals are able to communicate with other members of their species in a very sophitiscate way that is able to address specific meanings such as differentiate different foods, dangers and yes, nouns.
I want to state that I believe in the theories of Frans de Waal (Frans de Waal) that address that every complex trait in humans being is the resoult of a evolutive history and hence it can be found, though in different state of complexitiy and development, in other species as well. And communication is one of these traits.

As I'm afraid that my question is going to be long, because I love this subject, I upload the video that talks about parrots and names here, if you want to find out more, is in the end of this answer :).

Here come some examples, some of them are more accepted than others.

Vervet monkeys make specifical sounds to alert of specific dangers, we could call them specific words:

During the 1960s, researcher Tom Struhsaker of the New York Zoological        Society carried out a study of vervet monkeys in Kenya's Amboseli National        Park. He discovered that vervets have different alarm calls for their three        main enemies: leopards, eagles, and snakes. Most interesting of all, he        found that each type of call caused the vervets that heard it to behave        in a very different way – a way that would help protect them from        that particular predator.

      When the vervets heard a "leopard" alarm call, they would scamper up the        nearest trees. An "eagle" call caused the monkeys to look up at the sky        and head for thick, low-lying bushes. Finally, a "snake" call made the animals        stand up on their hind legs and peer into the long grass around them.

Souce of the image and the quote: 2. The Secret Code of Monkeys. In spite that this investigation was very controversial in its time it is well accepted and often cited in studies and articles about animal communication.
TalkBank Ethology Data: Field Recordings of Vervet Monkey Calls
(https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LD...)
(Link provided by Mark A. Mandel.
Dolphins using phones!.

• Bottlenose dolphins – It was long believed that dolphins were never able to demonstrate the  ability to communicate in their own language, but in light of a recent  discovery, this may have been incorrect. With the use of a CymaScope[24] researchers have discovered that dolphins are now using their whistles  to communicate more than just a simple hello to one another. They are  discussing their demographics:  names, ages, locations, genders, etc. It only makes sense that one of  the world’s most intelligent animals has a language that they use to  convey information to one another. Just like each person has his or her  own unique voice, each dolphin has its own unique whistle sound,  allowing each dolphin to maintain a separate identity, similar to  humans. Although this may be nothing spectacular, dolphins are able to  create new sounds and whistles when trying to attract a mate. Another  interesting point is that in most (if not all) groups, there is a  designated leader. The leader is responsible for communicating with  other groups’ leaders, discussing possible things such as demographics  or locations of food and danger. Remarkably, dolphins can hear one  another up to 6 miles apart underwater through a method called echolocation.[25]

National Geographic has an article outlining the successes of a mother dolphin  communicating with her baby using a telephone. Researchers noted that it  appeared that both dolphins knew who they were speaking with and what  they were speaking about. Nowadays, scientists are intrigued by the  dolphins’ language and are attempting to “crack the code.” Not only do  dolphins communicate via nonverbal cues, but they also seem to chatter  and respond to other dolphin’s vocalizations.[26]

Source: Animal language.
(On a side note, there are many more examples of animal communication in this article of Wikipedia).
Although, as it is easy of understand, this statement of dolphins using phones can be very controversial, the core of this research is to show that the signals used by dolphins are quite more complex and specifical than general calls or group songs as it was formely believed.

Bees dances to indicate where is the food. Curiosly this well acepted concept is being under debate in the last years. I put this here to put a specific example of animals talking about food, because this aspect of animal communication is not well researched, and also because if these bees don't dance for displaying where is the food, they are also showing a very complicated behaviour that deserves attention:

• Bee dance - used to communicate direction and distance of food source in many species of bees

 

And finally, my favourite one: parrots giving name to their chicks

Scientists have known for some time that parrots use these  signature calls to refer to each other. Observing the process in captive  birds led researchers to wonder how wild parrots dealt with naming,  because it could show how names are given. The researchers felt there  were two possibilities for how parrots get their names: it could be  biologically innate (each bird names itself) or assigned by another  older bird, which turned out to be the case.
For the study, the researchers placed video cameras in 16  green-rumped parrot nests in Venezula. These birds are part of a large  wild population that has been living in nesting tubes rigged up by  scientists in 1987. The researchers then moved around the parrot eggs so  that half of the colony were raising babies that weren’t theirs  genetically. Recordings of the calls made by the parents before the  chicks were able to chirp , and of the calls once the chicks were  individually vocal showed that parents started making the calls when the  birds were very young. Additionally, the recordings showed that the  parent’s calls provided a basis on which the baby would imitate and  tweak their own name. The names bore more similarity to the parents that  raised the offspring, than the biological parents, suggesting that the  calls are in fact learned by the chicks rather than innate.
Parrots are not the only animals known to have names. In  addition to humans, dolphins also use specific names for each individual.

Mi pregunta: ¿Cómo se inscriben los instintos naturales en el código de funcionamiento de un animal/ser vivo/ especie?

Pues eso. A ver si alguien me echa un cable.

No conozco ni una maldita simulación matemática que explique este fenómeno. Mucho menos un estudio sobre el proceso bioquímico de inscripción de un comportamiento en el ADN de un ser vivo.

Pues hala, ahí está la pregunta.

In evolution process, when do two varieties of same species become two different species?

In evolution process, when do two varieties of same species become two different species?

Two varieties of same species have small difference in chromosome and two species have different chromosome number. When does that happen following evolution process?

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You ask about when and not about how. So...When?, sometimes the answer is just "when the disparate chromosome structures avoid producing offspring together". I explain it bellow.

It is a terrific question that can't be answered so easily. In animals that share the same geographical territory the moment is a undefined period of time when animals of the future species clearly prefer to mate among then rather than with the other fraction of the current species.

But the process of speciation doesn't need to be a question of once and forever. The variety of probabilities in nature is madly overhelming. We are talking about many factors, individuals and time.
To put you one very intriguing example, let's look to ourselves, the process of speciation of human beings. We have genetic similarities with both chimps and bonobos, suggesting common ancestors (Take into account that we are talking of common ancestors of both humans and chimps, chimps are not the ancestors of humans). Genetic analysis point that humans and chimpanzees speciated apart 4.1 million years ago.But, and it is a giant but...

Analysis of the two species' genes in 2006 provides  evidence that after human ancestors had started to diverge from  chimpanzees, interspecies mating between "proto-human" and  "proto-chimps" nonetheless occurred regularly enough to change certain  genes in the new gene pool:
A new comparison of the human and chimp genomes suggests that after  the two lineages separated, they may have begun interbreeding... A  principal finding is that the X chromosomes of humans and chimps appear to have diverged about 1.2 million years more recently than the other chromosomes.
The research suggests:

There were in fact two splits between the human and chimp lineages,  with the first being followed by interbreeding between the two  populations and then a second split. The suggestion of a hybridization  has startled paleoanthropologists, who nonetheless are treating the new genetic data seriously.

Source: Human evolution

more about this possible hybridation: Human and Chimp Ancestors Might Have Interbred

Bear in mind that we are taling about proto-humans, not humans. However, if this emntioned 2006 genetic study is correct...in our own species there wasn't a clear event of separation...but...but...two.

Now, in your question details you tell that different species have different number of chromosomes. It is not a neccessary requisite, as you have been told in other answers. There is a terrific study made in two species of flycatchers ( European pied flycatcher and the collared flycatcher, these two species occur together on the Baltic islands of Öland and  Gotland, and are still able of hybridizing), here is the link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/rele....

 Ok, the scientific of the university of Upssala sequenced the whole genome of the two secies found out that:

The scientists have now managed to identify the regions in the  respective flycatchers' genomes that are most clearly different. It  turns out that it is a matter of one or a few regions per chromosome,  and these regions coincide with the chromosome parts that are involved  in meiosis and the production of gender cells (centromeres). This  indicates that what underlies the separation of the species it is the  disparate chromosome structures rather than different adaptations in  individual genes.

They also point out that this same process can happen in more events of speciation.

So...When?, sometimes the answer is just "when the disparate chromosome structures avoid producing offspring together".

Sometimes. I was only speaking about animals. If you find them (us) complicated, you wouldn't believe what kind of tricks can plants do. 

How common is sex between different species of animals?

The original question as it was written:

How common is sex between different species of animals?

Specially interested in sex between species which cannot produce hybrid offspring together.

So, this another question posted on Quora. I understand that the poster stressed the point that the two species weren't able to produce hybrids together because their intention was to find how common was sex for the sake of sex in the case of different animals.

And I opened my big mouth, I mean I started to type this answer looking for being clear and open minded. Enjoy...

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No, I am not telling that there is an evolutionary reason to find goats sexy, and I would not sympathise with anybody that would use this as an excuse. I am just talking about facts recorded in the wild, but never, never will admit they are an excuse for human behaviour.

But, interspecific intercourse is more common than I used to think.

I thought this event took place in human designed enviroments (planned interbreeding as in mules, and sex for the sake of having fun among animals not very stressed by the need to runaway predators, this was my mental scenario), but not...animals, stubborn creatures always find a way to cheat the rules. Why?, because they are stubborn rulebreaker maniacs, this is my current hypothesis. Anybody wants to defy it?...
The best clue that some interspecific sex has been there, are hybrids. And there some weird examples of hybrids in the wild:

• Natural hybrids populations of lemurs in Magadascar: DNA analysis indicates that the population  at Andringitra is a hybrid population between the two species. -> Source: http://messybeast.com/genetics/h...

• Hybrid wild dolphins (yes, dolphins are horny, but it would be more logical that they could only produce offspring in captivity, but...again stubbornnes won logic): In 1933, three strange dolphins were  beached off the Irish coast that were apparent hybrids of Risso's Dolphin and Bottlenose Dolphin, and this hybridation was later proven to be possible in captivity.There are also reports of possible hybrids of bllue Whales, Fin Whales and Humpback Whales in the wild. Source->http://messybeast.com/genetics/h...

(If you feel more curiosity about hybridization, there are hundreds of them compiled in Sarah Hartwell´s site - http://messybeast.com/genetics/h... it is amazing, and she is very strict with the material she uses, I recomend it).


But the conclusion is that yes, different species mate in the wild.

• Most of the time we can not keep man's influence off the equation, loss of habitat has impossed many animals an added difficulty to fin a mate, and has push together species that used to be isolated.  This is explained under the epigraph "Introduced species and habitat fragmentation" in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyb....

• But this does not explain all cases of interspecific matings in the wild. There are some extremely bizarre cases that are not even taken into account in this article in the wiki (a suggestion, include them, they are amazing, or sexy, or whatever, but deserve a place in this wiki article): Sexual parasites, forced hybrids. Sexual parasites offer unique insights into asexual and sexual  reproduction. They mate with a ‘host’ whose genetic contribution is  discarded either immediately (in androgenesis or gynogenesis) or after a  delay of one generation (in hybridogenesis). The discarded genome can  be maternal or paternal, implying that not only females but also males  can reproduce asexually. The resulting lineages are often older than  ecological or evolutionary theory predicts.-> http://www.sciencedirect.com/sci....

And all this talking only about hybrids (I would say that in the last case not the type of hybrid we should expect, only clever animals hacking sex for reproducing breaking the laws of sexual reproduction. Stubbornnes and animals again).

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Well, reading my answer again I realize that I have talked about hybrids once and again. Well, take into account that for needing that two species different generate an third hybrid species (the case I've talked about beneath these lines), we need first two different species. On many ocassions these species mate because they were iniatilly one species that diverged into two, and they were different enough to produce a third one together. See this interesting article here: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/what-happens-when-you-end-up-with-an-extra-genome/.

 

But on many ocassions animals mate with animals of different species just because it happens:

Some animals opportunistically mate with individuals of another species. This is more commonly observed in domesticated species and animals in captivity, possibly because captivity is associated with a decrease in aggression and an increase in sexual receptivity.^[52] Nevertheless, animals in the wild have been observed to attempt sexual activity with other species.^[53] It is mostly documented among species that belong to the same genus, but sometimes occurs between species of distant taxa.^[54] Alfred Kinsey cites reports of sexual activity involving a female eland with an ostrich, a male dog with a chicken, a male monkey with a snake, and a female chimpanzee with a cat.^[55]
A 2008 review of the literature found 44 species pairs that had been observed attempting interspecies mating, and 46 species pairs that had completed interspecies matings, not counting cases that had resulted in hybridization. Most were known from laboratory experiments, but field observations had also been made.^[54] It may result in fitness loss because of the waste of time, energy, and nutrients.^[54]
Male sea otters have been observed forcibly copulating with seals,^[56][57] and male seals have been observed forcibly copulating with penguins.^[58] Male grasshoppers of the species Tetrix ceperoi often mount other species of either sex and even flies, but are normally repelled by the larger females.^[54] Males of the spider mite species Panonychus citri copulate with female Panonychus mori mites almost as often as with their own species, even though it does not result in reproduction.^[54]
 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reproductive_sexual_behavior_in_animals#Cross-species_sex).

How do birds treat dying family members?

Many birds simply leave alone or even kick out others that look ill.
Parents of many songbird chicks will stop feeding them and leave the nest if they feel there is a big predator near, and if humans handle the chicks or the nest.
It is said that psitacids attack ill members of their group to death -about this particular point I have not source- and many vets advice to separate ninfas or agapornis pairs when one of them looks ill, just to avoid the other one kills it.
Migrant bird can leave a healthy set of chicks if migration time has arrived, it has been observed in Apus apus and some other, by example in Hirundo rustica this behavior is less frequent.
But when it comes to birds and mammals every coin has two sides. They can be very compassive and even make an enormus effort to help a dying mate (1), and there have been studies that the have a notion of death and even mourning rituals (2).

(1) Difficult to believe?, take a glance to this web page: One of Life’s Tiny Dramas Captured Forever on Film

Image: Wilson Hsu

For homosexual animals, how would a female win over another female instead of fighting for her like a male?

Ok, before you feel the need of telling me that animals are not homosexuals (or that they are), or that asking specifically about females is just...a bit narrowed minded, let me explain that this is a question written in Quora and I have copied it here just in the way it was written.
Here is the complete question:

For homosexual animals, how would a female win over another female instead of fighting for her like a male?
Like a deer, a female usually doesn't have antlers, so she can't fight heterosexual males. How would homosexuality play for females in order to impress a mate? Again, a bird, a male bird has flashy colors while a female has camouflage, so homosexual female birds?

Well, the author of the question is apparently appaled by what they think it is a lack of chances for "homosexual" females, that lack in their opinion strength and appeal to attract or fight for another female...
hmmm...
If it were this way homosexual behavior in females would be very weird. But not, there are a bunch of examples that tell us that this is not the case.
Another answer on Quora (so long and thnks for all the fish, yes). Enjoy...
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 If the animals "follow" the rules of the species, it is not neccessary to "fight". For example, female deers in the same harem don't have to fight any male to have an homosexual moment.
So, the interesting thing here is to find some species in which females want to form their own homosexual unions fighting males. And in spite that -in gneral- scientists are quite more focused in what males do, yes, there are some studied cases of stable female unions that exclude temporaly males. And what seems to be the norm in these cases is that females choose to form the bond, they don't have to fight males to attract females, although this doesn't exclude that both females have to fight males that want to break their bond.

- Japanesse macaques is one example.  In some populations (notice the word population), homosexual behaviour among females is not only common, it's the norm. 
The pairings can even last a whole week, mounting hundreds of times.  When they're not mating, the females stay close together to sleep and  groom, and defend each other from possible rivals. Males don't just have to compete with other males for access to females: they have to compete with females too. In this species there is sexual dimorphism (Males weigh on average 11.3 kg , while females average 8.4 kg. Macaques from colder areas tend to weigh more than ones from warmer areas).
So what seems to explain the atachment between the females is pure and simple sexual attraction and the deed of them. So, females don't have to fight to gain females, they just choose each other, at least for some weeks.
But, these females don't exclude posterior mating with males.

Another interesting case, is the Laysan albatros which nests in Hawaii.
Among  them, pairs are usually "married" for life. It takes two  parents working together to rear a chick successfully.
But in one population on the island of Oahu, 31% of the pairings are made up of two unrelated females.  What's more, they rear chicks, fathered by males that are already in a  committed pair but which sneak matings with one or both of the females.  Like male-female pairs, these female-female pairs can only rear one  chick in a season. Again, in this case, it is the choice of the females, that don't exclude mating with males, what we see.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/2...