If there’s one thing I know about humans, it’s that we love animals. Switch on the TV and you’ll find Attenborough documentaries mixed in with Bluey. Flick to your phone and you’re inundated with reels about this week’s viral sensation, like the adorable racoon Jimothy or the tragedy of Punch the monkey and his stuffed toy. And when you peel your eyes from your timeline, you’re inevitably confronted by a freeloader you call a pet.
When we watch animals, we tend to view them through the lens of our own thoughts and feelings, even though different species experience the world in very different ways. We can communicate, but only to a point. “I’m hungry” – yes. “I’m thirsty” – fine. “Here’s how to create a PowerPoint template” – a little tougher. But despite that, there are many aspects of animal communication that can inform our communication, and that’s what I’ll be exploring in this article.
Before we look at any one creature in any detail, let’s lay some groundwork. Every organism on this planet evolved over millions of years to the state we see them today, through a process known as natural selection. Here, organisms with traits that increased survival or reproduction passed on those traits (in the form of genes) to offspring more often than those without them, gradually refining each species down the generations. Considering that humans only emerged a paltry 350,000 years ago, the natural world has had far more time to perfect ideas than we have, and we can use that. The field of biomimicry, where human design challenges are solved using strategies derived from nature, is a prominent example. Even if you have experienced the joy of riding one of Japan’s sleek, ultra-fast bullet trains, you might not know its nose is based on the beak of a Kingfisher bird. This aerodynamic shape allows the trains to travel more quickly and silently, whilst reducing energy usage.
The idea of learning from nature can be true for communication too. There are certain physical laws and environmental properties that have an impact across species, and to which the best communication systems are adapted. This is central to sensory ecology, the study of how organisms acquire, process and respond to environmental information, which includes how they communicate. And I would argue these apply to human communication too!
I think at this point I better introduce myself, so you know I’m not just some guy comparing apples to oranges (or apes to org charts). My name is David, and I’m passionate about understanding animals. So passionate that I have 2 degrees in Zoology, specialising in animal behaviour and evolutionary biology. And the longer I’ve worked at BrightCarbon the more parallels I’ve seen between best practice for human communication and how animals communicate. There is a basis for these principles beyond human psychology, and it lies within animal sensory ecology.
So, join me as we explore some of those similarities, and learn how you can level-up your communication with some animal madness.
Choose your favourite area from the list below or grab a cup of something hot and start at the beginning.
One of the most important things an animal must do to survive is to distinguish between different things and establish the relationships between them. On a basic level, it’s important for an elephant to know at a glance that clear water is safe and red, algae filled water isn’t. It does a lion well to assess that the huge, muscly gazelle may be a tougher target than the tiny, shrimpy one. Animals can use visual cues to pick up information about their environment, ranging from clear size differences to specific patterns.
A great example is how some birds (such as Oystercatchers) show a greater preference for larger eggs. This trend continues when those eggs are artificially increased in size far larger than would be possible (or comfortable), probably because larger eggs tend to be more viable. Fast forwarding in time, newly-hatched chicks imprint on conspicuous moving objects that simulate a living parent or sibling more readily than static ones, indicating an instinctual understanding of what’s likely to benefit them.
Another great example is the establishment of social hierarchies in primates. Gorilla troops typically have one dominant mature male, whose maturity is signalled by his silver back. Elsewhere the facial colouration of male Mandrills corresponds to their rank, with the most dominant male showing the deepest red.
How does this apply to presentations?
Demonstrating the relationship between objects is essential in presentations. Take a pitch deck, where you’re comparing your company to a competitor. You might use data, with bars of differing heights to signal a clear contrast, or you might show images of different sizes to indicate market share or importance. And if you want to end the pitch showing a timeline of where you’ve been and where you’re going, then fading the past events or bolding text on the future ones are simple ways of communicating that to your prospects.
The quicker and more clearly you can show these details, the less time viewers need to spend trying to work the relationships, and the more time they can spend listening to your message.
So, use different layouts, object sizes, and text hierarchies to communicate relative importance, hierarchy and the flow of information to your audience in intuitive ways. You can also use contrasting colours to do this, although there you need to be careful…
Colour contrast is one of nature’s old hits. For instance, in many birds chicks have brightly coloured areas around their mouths which contrast with the dimly lit nest when begging for food, helping their parents to find them. This also works in reverse. To our eyes an orange-stripey tiger stands out against the green foliage in which it crouches. But to the colour-blind eyes of its prey, which cannot easily distinguish orange and green, the tiger might as well be a well-fanged shrub.
Different environments can affect the available light, and animals must adapt. Forests provide many light conditions, as brightness and colour composition of ambient light varies with canopy coverage. For example, warblers living in the forests of Kashmir defend territory by signalling using pale spots, and the species living in darker, denser forest have evolved brighter, higher contrast spots. Male golden-collared manakin birds have gold and black patches to attract females, which they show off in a mating dance. Before the dance, males clear leaf litter from the area, and analysis shows their patches contrast better with cleared ground than leaf litter.
If we dive beneath the waves, more examples surface. Generally, the deeper you sink the bluer things look because red light, which is low energy, is absorbed by water. The Caribbean striped mantis shrimp has yellow, fluorescent spots that shine brighter in blue light, allowing them to standout clearly to other shrimp deep under water.
How does this apply to presentations?
When it comes to humans, colours can have a big impact. You can use contrasting colours on objects and text to highlight key details or emphasise differences. Noting key takeaways in darker, bolder text helps to draw the audience’s attention and emphasise importance. Splitting a slide’s background into different colour blocks lets you divide content into multiple discrete topics.
One common shorthand is using green for good and red for bad but be careful here. Colour blindness affects an estimated 300 million people worldwide, with red/green being the most common, so there’s a good chance someone in your presentation might have trouble distinguishing between colours. Similarly, people with dyslexia find reading black text on a white background harder than reading the black text on an off-white background, or grey text on a white background.
Ensuring you avoid these pitfalls by carefully considering colour contrast is essential to making your presentations accessible for the entire audience. This article has more tips on making presentations both beautiful and accessible.
And don’t just consider what they look like on that stunning retina display you have in your office. Always test in the room you’ll be presenting in – you’ll be amazed what a poor projector can do to all that lovely, subtle design work.
So far, my examples have been one thing or another. Light or sound. But there’s a reason silent film went out of fashion – combining the two can be more effective! Multimodal displays are signals that use multiple senses simultaneously. Think about those obnoxious adverts that bombard you with colour and sound, trying to get you to buy some new horrible candy. They’re memorable because they play on many senses, and the animal kingdom is stuffed with examples of this.
Two of my personal favourite bird are Australian Magpies and Australian Magpie-Larks, infamous across Australia for aggressively defending their territory by swooping at such threats as cars, bicycles and children. Mating pairs patrol their territory zealously and signal they’re at home and ready to fight with complex duets. The couple sing and dance together, performing different parts of one song, whilst pumping their bodies and flapping their wings. By using both sound and visual cues the couple seems to reinforce and strengthen their message.
Male peacocks are nature’s most famous show-off with their iridescent, fan-like tails that they use to attract females. Beyond just showing their tail as a visual cue, they also vibrate it, which simultaneously makes it more visible and produces a low frequency noise that acts as an additional signal.
How does this apply to presentations?
We can tap into this multi-sensory approach in the presentation world too. By replacing on-screen text with visuals that align with, but don’t repeat, what the presenter is saying you can improve retention – that’s because the audience processes the presenter’s talk track through the phonological loop and the visuals in the visuospatial sketchpad. This dual coding makes messages much more sticky and much less overwhelming.
A message said once can easily be missed. Repetition is key to ensuring your message is heard and remembered. Rattlesnakes rattle a lot; it’s sort of their thing. Nature isn’t simply constant unique patterns, and you’ll have noticed repeats. Why do bees, wasps and hoverflies have the same dress sense? Well, these are examples of mimicry, where different species seem to copy each other. Mimicry falls broadly into two categories:
Heliconius butterflies, found across the Americas, demonstrate both. These species are foul-tasting and show a variety of beautiful, distinctive wing patterns to remind predators of that. These patterns overlap with each other (Mullerian) and have been hijacked by other palatable species too (Batesian).
How does this apply to presentations?
Consistency is just as important in human communication. Using a consistent brand style will make what you produce more effective by ensuring that every slide and every presentation forms part of a cohesive picture. A consistent image of who you are for a more powerful message.
Within a presentation, consistency is also key. Consistency in icons, imagery, fonts, colour and terminology stops the viewer getting lost in your messaging and instead quickly reinforces it. One of my favourite tricks is to use a stock image person to illustrate a story and stick with that same stock image model as the story progresses, so the audience can identify with that individual and follow their journey easily.
And speaking of following a journey, our final point is about navigation. From maps to satnav to your overly confident friend who swears that you need to take the next right, we humans have lots of tools to assist us. Animals also have an amazing repertoire of skills and cues to help them find their way.
Pigeons in particular possess impressive navigational skills. This may seem surprising based on their reputation as flying rats that get stuck in shops but homing pigeons have famously been used for centuries to deliver messages across great distances. Studies demonstrate their ability to integrate different visual cues, including light polarisation, star patterns, magnetic fields and physical landmarks. Pleasingly GPS tracking shows that they follow roads from above, even taking motorway exits or flying round roundabouts.
Longhorn crazy ants and German cockroaches leave scent trails that they or their kin can then follow later. During the breeding season, female garter snakes produce pheromones that males can follow to find a potential mate. Time and time again, the point is to create a clear path for someone to follow.
How does this apply to presentations?
This is also critical for presentations. Your audience needs to understand where they are in the story you’re trying to tell. If someone gets lost, instead of listening to you they’ll spend time trying to work out where they are. To avoid this, you need to tell a strong clear story with key principles you keep returning to. To help with this, we find it useful to divide each slide, or slide sequence, into 3 parts: problem, solution, impact.
This can create a cohesive story that flows, so that your audience can easily follow along.
You can also keep your audience on track by using visual markers of where you are in the presentation, from small dots (breadcrumbs) to clear section dividers to a repeated value proposition slide that sets the agenda.
If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this blog, besides animals being awesome, it’s that what you see in nature isn’t just random. These wonderful creatures are communicating with each other deliberately and consistently.
If you want to give your daily PowerPoint grind a bit more dignity, think about these examples and how they can inspire you. How can you build your next presentation deck with intention and clarity, so every man and his dog can understand it? Don’t overthink it – use the best practice nature has already worked out for you.
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