http://www.upali.ch/communication_en.html Elephants communicating in low frequencies and high decibels, sound like trombone. The touch of their trunks to each other skin, mouth, and etc is a communication as well. And these communications are complex...very much so BBC Super Smart animals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUCdWyLNNXU&feature=related I have an idea of deciphering the language and communication of animals on our planet to better understand the scope and diversity of the probable communication techniques that aliens on other planets might use.
But however they communicate among themselves, when communicating with people on other planets they will be limited by the laws of nature to the same transmission media that we use. They'll have to use electromagnetic radiation just like we do. Anyone who reaches this level of science and technology will have discovered all the same universal constants that we have. It's widely assumed that the first signal anyone sends out into space should be pi in binary, rendered to some arbitrary number of digits sufficient to make it unmistakably the work of an intelligent being rather than coincidental noise.
Well thats the point I am trying to make, we are not opening ourselves to other ways of transporting information of communication. Assuming that sending electromagnetic radiation as the only way of communication is wrong. A possibility that exists to code information within symmetry of star dust or deviation from their natural way. I think that if elephants did not come into contact with human forms of communication they would have evolved a different way of communications alltogether through patterns perhaps, something that our sensors are not adept at utilizing. Imagine what the possibilities of communication are for species on other planets who have not come to contact with us? Our present ways of communication are: whistling, smoke signaling, singing, rhytm beats, imagery communication, reading emotions of face to guess patterns of thinking, morse code tapping, sky smoke shapes... Obviously in space all of this would be different. Perhaps the outcome of a civilization evolution is a communication by itself through those who have given birth to species that live in this civilization.
Telepathy as brainwaves has long been part of the scifi colture of depiction of aliens' communication. How would they communicate their emotions? Would their movement patterns communicate this? The color of their skin changes, fluorescence perhaps? mantis shrimps change the colors of their small fins as a way of communication...
