Parley of the Apes: Scientists say apes have their own languages

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

Apes have their own 'languages' - just like humans, according to new research.

Hoots, grunts, barks and screams are distinctive to the groups in which they live and communicate.

It was previously thought our closest living relatives had a fixed repertoire of instinctive, automated calls.

Lead author Dr. Adriano Lameira, of Warwick University, said: "Great apes, both in the wild and captivity, are finally helping us to resolve one of the longest-standing puzzles in science - the origin and evolution of language.

"We can now start conceiving of a gradual path that likely led to the rise of the talking ape, us, instead of having to attribute our unique verbal skills and advanced cognition to divine intervention or random genetic jackpot."

It adds to evidence our primate ancestors had the tools for speech five million years ago - when the lineages split.

The study in by Nature Ecology and Evolution establishes a direct 'developmental vocal continuum.'

Unique 'vocabularies' were shaped by social mingling. The phenomenon also occurred in humans - leading to a variety of tongues.

An international team recorded the sounds of around 70 wild orangutans in Southeast Asia.

It was the largest analysis of its kind - spread across six populations in the swamps and low rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.

They differed naturally in density from those that mixed intensely to others that were more dispersed.

Among the former, individuals communicated using a large variety of original calls.

They tried out lots of novel sound variants that were continually modified or dropped.

On the other hand orangutans in sparser bands favored traditional and conventional calls.

They did not experiment with such a huge number of novel noises. When they did introduce a new variant, they kept it.

So their stock was richer than counterparts in bigger populations who continually discarded fresh ones.

If orangutan call communication is socially shaped, this was also likely the case with our direct, extinct ape-like ancestors.

Social influence is predictably modest at first before the rise of a fully operational primitive language.

It could have then increased steadily - ultimately leading to the myriad ways in which language is determined by those who surround us.

Dr. Lameira said: "Many more clues await us in the lives of our closest living relatives - as long as we manage to guarantee their protection and their preservation in the wild.

"Each disappearing population will take with it unretrievable glimpses of the evolutionary history of our species."

Orangutans are threatened with extinction because of the destruction and degradation of lowland forests in Borneo and Sumatra.

Three years ago Dr. Lameira and colleagues discovered chimpanzees smack their lips together at almost the same speed as humans.

Videos of the African apes during grooming sessions showed they could move them two to five times a second.

This closely matches humans - who are able to move their lips two to seven times a second.

Dr. Lameira said: "Language defines human communication, but its evolution defies scientific explanation.

'Great apes, our closest relatives, may hold the key to how language evolved in our lineage."