‘Hidden language’ that chimpanzees use when talking discovered: here are the research results

Although very often we see the opposite, by talking our communication skillsWe think this is the main thing that sets us apart from other living things. In fact, your understanding of the information given by attributing a meaning and sound to the forms you see while reading these lines, i.e. “writing”, has evolved throughout history as a result of this skill.

On the other hand, chimpanzees, which are genetically closest to humans, have evolved ways of communicating with each other just like other living things. Of course, genetic affinity between us leads to a surprising and at the same time astonishing similarity of these communication routes. A study conducted at Tai National Park in Côte d’Ivoire, a country known for its rainforests in Africa, found that chimpanzees verbal and spoken language brought to light.

Chimpanzees make sentences! But how?

Taken from a group of 46 different chimpanzees living in the national park, 5000 thousand different sound recordings with a total length of 900 hours analyzed. It was determined how chimpanzees use monophonic calls in sequences, how these sounds are arranged in sequences, and how independent sound sequences are combined.

It has been discovered that chimpanzees have different meanings depending on the place and context they use. 12 different call types like grunt, hum, scream, whine, scream revealed. Binary sounds combined with single sounds were categorized as “bigram” and triple sounds as “trigram”.

It then generates a network map of how these expressions are combined in different ways. How different types of bigrams and trigrams are ordered or recombined is revealed. Trigram, that is, a gram between the triple sound series, that is, the binary sounds. combined in different ways understood.

Tatiana Bortolato of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who was part of the research team“Chimpanzeesshows that they have developed a much more complex voice communication system than previously thought.” made a statement. For example, some grunts are predominant when it comes to foodgasping for air greeting sound was used as. When chimpanzees detect a threat, they emit a single buzz, but in their bilateral communication, this buzz is weaker.

The 390 different sound sequences discovered can shed light on the evolution of human languages:

At the end of the process we just mentioned, the researchers; Combining 12 different sound sequences with different combinations and with different meanings. 390 different sound sequences, ie sentence structures they arrived. However, the number of these sound sequences may be higher than detected. Because 12 different sounds have the potential to be encoded in hundreds of different ways. In other words, chimpanzees may use these sounds in new ways in the future to incorporate what they cannot express into their verbal communication.

“We see a structure beyond the accepted understanding of primates, although it may seem much less than the infinite number of different sequences that would be produced by humans,” the researchers said. By studying the vocal sequences of chimpanzees, a socially complex species like humans, we can find out where we came from and what to understand how our unique language has evolved.We’re trying to bring a new perspective.”

You can access the scientific paper published in the journal Nature Communications Biology.