Why can't animals speak?

You might think these bears look like they are telling each other a joke,
but they can't be, can they?  

This morning on my way to school, I was talking with my mother about school and asked her if there were any different ways of learning.

She suggested a good way was to think of things I'd like to know more about and explore, like I sometimes do on this blog. So I thought of a question I would like to explore and here it goes:

Why can't animals speak?

I'll be investigating this and will let you know what I've found out about it here in a few days.

In the meantime, if you have any interesting ideas or things to share, please leave a comment!

If you could only say one sentence again and again for the rest of your life, what sentence would you choose and why?

From Dominic, by William Steig.
Dominic is not like most dogs, he can say lots of sentences
and think lots of interesting thoughts. 

Every morning I walk to school with my mother. It takes about half an hour and we meet lots of dogs. I don't like dogs at all.

Especially small nervous dogs make me very nervous. When we see a dog in the distance, I try to relax my body, make it go floppy. That way I don't get so tense and don't get so frightened when we pass by it.

This morning a few dogs were barking in the distance. I started wondering what they were saying. And then I realised something quite funny about dogs.

I said to my mother: "Have you realised, Mummy, that dogs have only one sentence? It's like they repeat the same lyric again and again. Their conversations can't be very interesting at all. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof."

We imagined a conversation between five dogs, stuck with one sentence each.

Dog 1: 'Hello, how are you today?'
Dog 2: 'Midget!'
Dog 3: 'I don't know about you but I'm feeling a bit hungry'.
Dog 4: 'Eeeew'.
Dog 5: 'How dare you?'

And we practiced the conversation until we couldn't stop laughing.

Then we tried to imagine what our conversations would be like if we only had one sentence to say and we thought about what sentence we would choose if we knew we were going to be stuck with just one sentence for the rest of our lives.

We decided that the best sentence would probably be something friendly like: "Hello, hope you are well today". That way nobody would be frightened of us and they'd probably not attack us either. 

What sentence would you choose if you could only say one sentence again and again for the rest of your life?

Please leave your answers in the comments. I'm sure we'll find them interesting and funny too.

Have a good day. Iain.