"Oh, we parrots can talk in two languages-people's language and bird language," said Polynesia proudly. "If I say, 'Polly wants a cracker,' you understand me. But hear this: Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee?"
"Good Gracious!" cried the Doctor. "What does that mean?"
"That means, 'Is the porridge hot yet?-in bird language."
"My! You don't say so!" said the Doctor. "You never talked that way to me before."
"What would have been the good?" said Polynesia, dusting some cracker-crumbs off her left wing. "You wouldn't have understood me if I had."
"Tell me some more," said the Doctor, all excited; and he rushed over to the dresser-drawer and came back with the butcher's book and a pencil. "Now don't go too fast-and I'll write it down. This is interesting-very interesting-something quite new. Give me the Birds' A.B.C. first-slowly now."
So that was the way the Doctor came to know that animals had a language of their own and could talk to one another.

Hugh Lofting
"The Story of Dr. Dolittle"

The zoo enclosure wasn't conducive to audio recording and the Tasmanian devil just didn't want to go outside, so Elizabeth von Muggenthaler stepped into the cage to gently coax her friend.

"The keeper had a big shovel and a broom," she laughingly recalled, "and I wondered why."

As it turned out, real-life Tasmanian devils make the Looney Tunes character Taz look tame! Immediately, the marsupial began chasing von Muggenthaler around the cage, alternately growling, barking and screaming and baring its teeth.

"I was just leaping all over the cage. They try to hamstring you and you have to perform bizarre, ritual dance-like maneuvers in order to avoid being bitten. It gives new meaning to 'high-stepping!'"

Luckily, the keeper was able to corner the animal while von Muggenthaler escaped through a "doggie door" at the back of the cage.

But that was several years ago, when von Muggenthaler was just beginning her work as a real-life Dr. Dolittle.

Today, she is president and founder of Fauna Communications Research Institute, a nonprofit organization located in Hillsborough, N.C., that records and studies animal communication. She has listened to and recorded the conversations of the Sumatran rhinoceros, tigers, giraffes, okapi and elephants, among others. And she knows better now than to step into the cage of a Tasmanian devil.

The only child of animal-loving parents, von Muggenthaler first became interested in the sounds of animals as an undergraduate psychology student, with an emphasis in animal behavior, at Old Dominion. Under the guidance of Joseph Daniel, a former dean of the College of Sciences and professor of biological sciences, and Allan Zuckerwar, a former adjunct faculty member in electrical and computer engineering, she recorded her first animal rumblings - rhinoceroses - at the Virginia Zoological Park in Norfolk.

"I used to cart the equipment around in a red children's wagon," she said. "Now the technology fits in my pocket."

Immediately after graduating in 1991, she founded Fauna Communications with Shelley Adams '92, another Old Dominion graduate, who keeps the organization's finances in order, and two technical professionals.

"We felt a need for a facility that went outside the bounds of traditional bio-acoustics research. Additionally, I wanted a place where students could intern. Students are practically guaranteed a professional journal publication under their own name, which helps create a new generation of bio-acousticians," von Muggenthaler said. "Public internships and lectures also bring animal communication to the public, not just the readers of scientific journals."

Her research has taken her to Britain, Spain and all over the United States. But more importantly, it has taken her to another realm, where animal communication could open the door for new understanding, diagnostic possibilities, even health benefits for humans.

"Our ultimate goal is to prove that some animals other than man have a structured language, and to create common languages between us and them," she explained. "We are bound to learn fantastic things if we are able to genuinely communicate with another intelligent species."

Tigers, for instance, have a wide variety of vocalizations. They use a "chuffling" sound for affectionate greetings, or mewling when they are cubs or courting. They also growl, hiss and grunt, and their mighty roar can be heard for several miles.

Tigers, like whales, elephants and rhinos, also can create sounds in a frequency below the human hearing range of 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz (cycles per second). This noise, called infrasound, can travel long distances, and scientists theorize that tigers are able to communicate with each other through dense forests.

One of von Muggenthaler's favorites is the Sumatran rhinoceros. Endangered and the oldest living species of rhino, these descendants of the wooly rhinoceros are by far the most "talkative" animals von Muggenthaler has observed.

In her research on three adult Sumatran rhinos at the Cincinnati Zoo, she discovered that these shy creatures were extremely vocal and produced signals almost continuously. Their "eeps," "whistleblows" and other vocalizations are song-like, she said, and surprisingly similar to the sounds of humpback whales. She noted that some research indicates rhinos may be a sister group to whales.

Next up for von Muggenthaler's group is a study on cats' purring. She hypothesizes that the purr is much more than a sign of contentment, that it actually has healing powers for the cat. She believes that many animals use specific frequencies to heal themselves, frequencies that the medical community now uses to heal people. With knowledge gained from recording animals, she hopes to provide the world with a new generation of noninvasive, simple and affordable healing methods.

A true animal lover - she has two cats, three dogs and three horses, including one that paints, at home - von Muggenthaler also seems to possess a higher quality that animals recognize and respond to.

"For almost 12 years I have been recording animals and, for some reason, I think they know why we are there. I have had tigers that will lie down two inches from me and 'chuffle,' grumble and just 'talk' for hours. I have had a serval [an African wildcat known for its almost constant movement] come right up to me, put her front paws on my knees and purr directly into the microphone for 2 minutes and 35 seconds without moving.

"We have the technology to create secondary languages with some animals, a language that both they and we understand and one in which they can answer back verbally. So let's do it.

"We have nothing to lose and everything to gain from direct contact with another sentient being from our own planet. We may even gain insight into our own humanity."

To read more about Fauna Communications Research Institute's work and to listen to various animal sounds it has recorded, visit the Web site at www.animalvoice.com.