Opening details

For decades, researchers have hypothesized that differences in primate brains explain why only humans can make meaningful sounds. But phonetician and cognitive scientist Axel Ekström discovered this assumption was wrong by examining two chimpanzees seen in a publicly available amateur video and a newsreel from the 1960s.

The hypothetical missing link that prevents chimpanzees from voluntarily connecting their jaws to their vocalizations appears to be missing.
– the researchers say in their article.

Watch how chimpanzees pronounce human words: video

By looking at old videos, Ekström and his team found that two unrelated chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) on different continents were saying something that sounded like “mom.” Taught by English speaking caregivers.

There is a suggestion that one of the first words to appear in human language may have been “mother.” The “m” sound is common to all human languages ​​and is often one of the first sounds babies make, so it is relatively easy for us to reproduce the pattern “m-vowel-m-vowel.”

Along with previous research in which Ekström analyzed a third chimpanzee’s voice recording in a TV movie from the 1960s. Pronouncing the words “dad” and “cup”These results suggest that chimpanzee brains are capable of deliberately repeating at least some of the sounds they hear.

These results support a growing body of evidence that great apes can learn vocal production.
scientists say.

This means that our neurological audiovisual system, which evolved independently in songbirds, may be much older than previously thought. Our primate species last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees millions of years ago.

Chimpanzees use a variety of sounds when communicating with each other in the wild, although they generally prefer gestures to sounds. Their sign-based language is structured in the same way as our vocal language. Gibbons are also known to make over 20 different sounds with different meanings.

Previous research and the harsh reality

Interestingly, these are not the first reports of speech in primates, although previous reports were “dismissed for lack of careful analysis.” But now we can speak of the first evidence that has been before our eyes for many years.

Past attempts to study this topic have had highly questionable ethics and results. Animals involved in famous projects to study great ape language 50 years ago, were under unnatural conditions, including social isolation and neglectoften after traumatic separation from their mothers. This does not allow for objective representation of the capabilities of these necessarily social and highly intelligent primates. Attempts to avoid humanizing animals sometimes lead to bias, which leads us to greatly underestimate their intelligence.

“Great apes can speak human words. Failure to prove this half a century ago was the fault of the researchers, not the animals,” the scientists concluded.