It's generally assumed that great apes aren't
capable of controlling their voices, and that our ability to do so couldn't
actually have originated from them.
But a Durham University study has turned
that notion on its head, with evidence gathered from an adolescent orangutan
strongly indicating that the species is, in fact, able to learn new sounds.
The research focused on a now 11 year-old
orangutan, living at Indianapolis Zoo in Indiana. While being sure not to cause
any major disruption to the animal's daily routine, the Durham team visited the
great ape, named Rocky, in April and May 2012, and on several occasions since.
While with Rocky, the researchers conducted a
simple, but extremely insightful test. While working with the ape, they made
random sounds with varying tone and pitch. Fascinatingly, Rocky was then
observed to mimic the sounds, repeating after the researchers in the same pitch
and tone.
While that discovery might not immediately
grab you as all that important, it actually contradicts long-term assumptions
about the voices of great apes.
"Instead of learning new sounds, it has
been presumed that sounds made by great apes are driven by arousal over which
they have no control," said Durham University's Dr Adriano Lameira.
"But our research proves that orangutans have the potential capacity to
control the actions of their voices."
With the findings seemingly disproving the
notion that our closest ancestors could not learn to produce new sounds, the
research strongly indicates that our ability to speak – the very thing that
sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom – did in fact stem from great
apes.
The team compared recordings of the sounds
made by Rocky with the largest available database of orangutan calls,
containing sounds gathered from more than 120 apes, over 12,000 hours of
observations of both wild and captive populations. The recordings of Rocky were
found to be different to those in the database, supporting the notion that he
learned the new sounds in a "conversational" context.
The research was published this week in the
journal Scientific Reports.
Unsurprisingly, this isn't the only case of
the study of nature providing clues to our own past. Take, for example, the
recent Dartmouth study of the aye-aye – a type of prosimian – and its love of
alcoholic foods. As it turns out, a genetic mutation shared by both those
primates and humans could explain our own ancestors' love of alcohol.
Original Publication by gizmag.com
No comments:
Post a Comment