Researchers claim to have deciphered the way primates communicate.
The article by Chris Green from The Independent details the various calls made by Campbell’s monkeys with an aim to interpreting what they mean.
The article reads:
The secret behind the origins of human language may lie in the jungle chatter of a species of monkey, a team of scientists has claimed.
The researchers spent months studying the calls of the Campbell’s monkey, or Cercopithecus campbelli, which lives in the forests of the Tai National Park in the Ivory Coast. They discovered that the animals not only use distinctive alarm calls to warn of specific predators nearby but can also combine them with other sounds to convey extra information – in much the same way humans use prefixes and suffixes.
The team, led by Professor Klaus Zuberbühler of the University of St Andrews, studied alpha male monkeys whose main task is to look out for potential threats and disturbances before using their calls to alert the rest of their group.
Simian speech: A brief dictionary
- *”Boom” Look out, falling branch, move!
- *”Boom-boom” Come to me
- *”Krak” Look out, a leopard!
- *”Krak-oo” Watch out, a general warning
- *”Hok” There’s a crowned eagle up there
- *”Hok-oo” Movement above
- *”Boom-boom, krak-oo krak-oo” Look out – falling tree
- *”Boom-boom, hok-oo krak-oo hok-oo” We are near another group of monkey
Continue reading (this article)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12monkey.html (New York Time’s article)
December 15th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Amazing the way all this detail is studied and used. I suppose accents come later. We have evolved ourselves but the primates look after each other in a more caring fashion. !!!!!