Language Is Used as a Group Protection Strategy

biologists go out to study zebras and

they're like making notes on a zebra and

they watch it then they look down at

their notes and then they look up and

they think oh i don't know which zebra i

was looking at so the camouflage is

actually against the herd because a

zebra is a herd animal not an individual

so this was a quandary for the

biologists so they did one of two things

one was use a dab of red paint and dab

the haunch of the zebra or tag it with

an ear tag like he used for cattle the

lions would kill it so as soon as it

became identifiable the predators could

organize their hunt around that

identifiable animal that's why you know

there's the old idea that lions and

predators take down the weak animals but

they don't they take down the

identifiable animals so that's the thing

is if you stick your damn head up you

get picked off by the predators and so

one of the things that academics seem to

do is congregate together in herd-like

entities and then they share a language

the language unites them as long as they

share the same set of linguistic tools

among themselves it's group protection

strategy