INTRODUCTION

We expect domestic animals to interact with us and to understand our communication with them, even though we are separate species and our evolutionary paths are quite different. Humans and ungulates are able to respond to cues and gestures that are a product of their social gregariousness, engaging in both intraspecies and interspecies communication. Seminal papers on animal communication by Dawkins and Krebs in the late 1970s recognised that animals communicate between species and are even deceitful in their intentions towards one another, particularly between predator and prey (Dawkins 1978; Dawkins & Krebs 1979; Guilford & Dawkins 1991). Dogs, humans, and sheep are able to assist one another in a farming situation through one species communicating signals and another species receiving those signals and reacting to them. As Donna Haraway (2007) points out, the whole process would not work if sheep did not know how to understand dogs and if dogs did not know how to interpret them. In a Western context, cross-species communication between a farmer and a sheep dog may develop into a wide array of voice commands, whistles, and pointing signals.