Dr. Cornelius and Caesar from Planet of the Apes The chimps weren’t alone. Two chimps were able to say “mama,” according to researchers who analyzed old videos.
The discovery of the chimpanzees Johnny and Renata offers intriguing insights into humans’ closest relatives and the evolution of human speech.
“Our analyses show that chimpanzees are capable of producing syllables,” the researchers wrote in Scientific Reports. Nature mentioned“The vocal production capabilities of great apes have been underestimated. Chimpanzees possess the neural building blocks necessary for speech.”
There was no pattern for chimpanzees to make vocal sounds like “mama” in nature, suggesting the species may be capable of “auditory learning,” researchers from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and Coventry University in the UK said.
Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, have been the same species for six to seven million years. Humans and chimpanzees share 98.8 percent of the same DNA. But for decades, scientists have been at a loss to explain why humans and chimpanzees are so similar. They can talk while other primates cannot..
Now, a re-examination of 20th-century research and a YouTube discovery have revealed that chimps can vocalize. A 2007 video shows Johnny at the Suncoast Ape Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, Florida, saying “mama” as a woman feeds him from behind a cage. Another video from 1962 shows Renata, a chimpanzee in Italy, saying the same word.
The ruling apes of Planet of the Apes are more advanced in speech than Johnny and Renata.
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The aim of the research was to revisit an experiment conducted in the late 1940s, when Keith and Catherine Hayes adopted a chimpanzee named Vicky and tried to teach her words. After years of effort, they reported that Vicky could say “dada,” “mama,” “up,” and “cup,” although her speech was far from fluent and lacked vowels after consonants in words.
Scientists have largely dismissed these experiments, citing the trauma inflicted on the animals and the lack of conclusive results. Despite extensive training, the animals could only produce rudimentary sounds.
But in the recordings, unlike Vicki, Johnny and Renata were able to add vowels after consonants, the researchers concluded, after asking 61 volunteers to listen carefully to the recordings.
Johnny and Renata may not be the only talking members of the ape family. According to The Indianapolis Post, an 11-year-old orangutan named Rocky can mimic human speech sounds. Another study in scientific reportsRocky’s voices are called “Wookiees,” a tribute to the fictional aliens in Star Wars.
Recent research has shown other ways in which chimpanzees behave like humans. Scientists in Uganda observed that even when food was scarce and they were feeling stressed, chimpanzee mothers Prioritize playing with their children..
