Dr. Cornelius and Caesar Planet of the Apes They weren’t alone: Researchers who analyzed old video footage showed that both chimps could say “mama.”
The discoveries about the chimpanzees Johnny and Renata provide fascinating insights into our closest relatives and the evolution of human language.
“Our analysis demonstrates that chimpanzees are capable of syllable production,” the researchers write in Scientific Reports. Nature magazine reported“The vocal capabilities of great apes have been underestimated. Chimpanzees possess the neural components necessary for vocalization.”
Researchers from Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the UK’s Coventry University say that chimpanzees do not produce “mama”-like vocalizations in the wild, suggesting that the animals may be capable of “auditory learning”.
Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, descended from the same ancestral species 6 to 7 million years ago. Humans and chimpanzees share 98.8% of their DNA. But for decades, scientists have wondered why humans are so different. Other primates cannot speak,.
Reexamination of 20th-century studies and YouTube discoveries have led to the discovery that chimpanzees do speak: A 2007 video shows Johnny at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, Florida, saying “Mama” as a woman feeds him from behind his cage. Another video from 1962 shows Renata, an Italian chimpanzee, uttering the same word.
The ape lords in Planet of the Apes have much more advanced linguistic skills than Johnny and Renata.
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The study was designed to re-examine experiments conducted in the late 1940s, when Keith and Katherine Hayes tried to teach a chimpanzee named Viki to speak. After several years of effort, Viki was able to say “papa,” “mama,” “up,” and “cup,” but her speech was far from fluent, and her words lacked vowels after consonants.
Scientists have largely rejected these experiments due to the trauma they cause to the animals and the lack of conclusive results — despite intensive training, the animals were only able to produce basic sounds.
But in the recordings, both Johnny and Renata, unlike Vicky, were able to add a vowel after the consonant, concluded the researchers, who listened carefully to the recordings for 61 volunteers.
Johnny and Renata may not be the only talking members of the ape family. An 11-year-old orangutan named Rocky who lives in Indianapolis can mimic human speech, according to a new study. Another study published in Scientific ReportsRocky’s sound is called a “Wookiee”, named in homage to the fictional alien that appears in Star Wars.
Recent studies have uncovered other ways chimpanzees behave like humans. Scientists in Uganda have found that even when food is scarce and exhausted, mother chimpanzees still eat. Make playing with your kids a priority.
