Speak With Animals

Cost: 25 points

Speak With Animals is an exotic mental Advantage that allows you to communicate with animals. The amount of information is dependent on IQ so low IQ animals will only be able to communicate simple emotions like hunger or fear while higher IQ animals might be able engage in a reasonably intelligent discussion

Special Enhancements

• Sapience (+40%)
• Universal (+20%); mutually exclusive with Specialized

Special Limitations

• Specialized
  • All land animals or All aquatic animals [-40%]
  • One class (Mammals, Birds, or reptiles) [-50%]
  • One family (Felines, Parrots, Dogs, etc) [-60%]
  • one species (House Cats or Macaws) [-80%]

Example

The Friskies Dear Kitten commercials give a feeling for the type of information you would get from a cat if using Speak With Animals (Sapience) for 35 points.

Alternatives

• Mind Reading: true "universal translator"
• Animal Empathy: understand the motivations of animals
• Mimicry: emulate animal sounds

Note

The examples given from family and species are poor as the break between a family and species is a little fuzzy in some cases. For example, depending on who you ask the domesticated dog is either a different species from the wolf (Canis lupus vs Canis familiaris) or a subspecies (Canis lupus familiaris).

See also

• Empathy
• Raised by wolves

References

• GURPS Basic Set, pg. 87
• GURPS Powers, pg. 77.