Study says baby seals have some of the best pipes in the animal kingdom

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Baby seals have some of the finest vocal skills in the animal kingdom, according to a new study.

Seal pups possess an "innate control" of their voice and an understanding of rhythm, scientists say.

Humans are among the few species capable of speech, which requires a range of skills and mental abilities.

Researchers explained that, among those skills, vocal learning - the ability to learn to produce new sounds - is "critical" for developing language.

They say that only a handful of animals possess the trait, including humans, bats, whales, seals, and elephants.

However, simply possessing the ability to create new sounds is not enough to unlock language.

Dr. Andrea Ravignani explained that studying whether animals possess additional language-related skills can help us understand what it takes to learn speech and reveal the history of its evolution.

Dr. Ravignani, of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Holland, and his colleagues studied seal pups' vocal plasticity, or how well they can adjust their own voices to compensate for their environment.

The team found that seal pups can change the pitch and volume of their voices, much like humans can.

The researchers said that the ability to change volume is common, but changing pitch, or fundamental frequency, is rare in animals.

Dr. Ravignani said: "Seals may have this capacity due to convergent evolution: vocal plasticity may be a trait which evolved independently in multiple lineages due to similar evolutionary pressures.

"For the case of humans and seals, plasticity and vocal learning may be associated with either advanced breathing control or singing abilities in both species."

The team also tested the ability of seal pups to identify rhythmic sounds using recordings of other seals.

They altered some of the recordings by changing tempos and adding rhythms to see how the young seals would react.

Seal pups paid "significantly more" attention to recordings with regular rhythms and fast tempos.

Dr. Ravignani added: "We can conclude that very young and untrained seals can discriminate between other seals' vocalization based on their rhythmic properties.

"Another mammal, apart from us, shows rhythm processing and vocalization learning; perhaps these two skills coevolved in both humans and seals."

Dr. Ravignani presented his findings at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Nashville.