We humans are vain creatures - we long considered ourselves the only animals on the planet who possessed true language, the only tool users, the only artists, and the only truly conscious beings.

It seems likely that some of the other primates and the cetaceans, oh, and some of the birds, at the very least, would disagree with us.

Laurens van der Post and his story of the pact between honey badger, the honey-guide bird, and bushman is an example of communication - stories are told by humans, but how is it that the birds and the badgers also know to take part in the hunt for homey?

We still like to say we are distinguished from all other life on this world by our ability to tell stories - but is that true?  Animals of many sorts have been known to deceive other animals using calls, posture, body language, and pantomime - is that not the telling of stories.

Bees return to hives and convey detailed information to their hive-mates, who in their turn interpret and act upon those stories.

When I was young, the science curriculum was teaching that "lesser" life was a sort of biological clockwork mechanism - all drives and instincts determined by genes.

Now we know how different the characters of members of the same species can be, how they play, form friendships and partnerships

Take the chimps who hunt other monkeys - they are observed having a conference before the hunt, and then splitting into groups, some to drive their pray, and some to lay in ambush.

Our language and story telling abilities are sophisticated, to be sure - but are they really so much more sophisticated that than other species possess, or do we only think that way because we fail to understand the depths and nuances of the communications of those others?