by The Peeps, Hoots and Grunts of Wild Bonobos, a kind of great monkeys who live in the African rainforest, can convey complex thoughts in a way that reflects some elements of human language, according to a new study.
The study says that Bonobos – the closest genetic relative of mankind – can combine different types of calls to the construct phrases in which vocalization changes the importance of another. This is the first time that such behavior was clearly documented in an animal, according to the researchers behind the study.
The research published on Thursday in the magazine Science questions the predominant idea that people are the only types with this ability, which is referred to as non -trivial compositionality and is regarded as a fundamental building block of human language.
“We would never say that Bonobos has a language because the language is specific to humans. It is our very special communication system,” said Simon Townsend, professor at the University of Zurich, who is studying cognition and is an author of the study. “However, we show that the language features in the Bonobos communication system seem to be present.”
Experts said the work was convincing. And because people and bonobos have a common ancestors, the work could help explain how people have developed their ability to use language in distant past.
“This is a very new and creative study,” said Robert Seyfarth, emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who studied primates and cognition and was not involved in this study. “The evolutionary origins of language are like the evolutionary origins of bipedalism that walk on the hind feet. It does not occur overnight. It gradually occurs and there are intermediate stages on the way. How do you start and rise to this evolutionary trajectory?
It is possible that other animals such as chimpanzees also have the ability to form phrases in which words change the meaning of the other.
“It could be that bonobos surpass chimpanzees in this property. It could be that they do the same. It could be that many other types do it,” said Townsend. “Now we have the way to really test this.”
A young male bonobo scratches his head.
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It took months for the rainforest and chase Wilde Bonobos to hunt out microphones to pave the way for this discovery.
The senior author of the study, Mélissa berth of the University of Zurich, spent about six months in the Democratic Republic of Congo after watching three groups of wild bonobos with colleagues in the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve. Lying places and their colleagues made detailed notes on what was going on when the bonobos made their vocalizations and recorded about 400 hours of audio.
“I would have a list of around 300 context -related parameters that I would use,” said Liege. “Did my caller fed?
Bonobos have complicated, matriarchal social structures with a lot of movement and activity, so that berths have made careful notes about group dynamics.
In the end, the researchers mapped more than 700 vocal calls, including combinations and the circumstances of the use of these vocalizations. Then they map the relationships between all data points and found at least four cases in which the bonobos combine different views to create new meanings.
The researchers have no precise understanding of what every Bonobo call should communicate, but they were able to make some assumptions about their purpose based on the context.
The researchers said that some calls meant things like “I feed”, “let’s create a nest” or “let’s travel further”.
The size of the groups often changes when bonobos come and go.
“You usually talk about things to coordinate the group,” said berth. “Just like people, they know, they are in the family, then they go to work, then go with friends, then with the family and so on. They really need complex communication to coordinate it. And it is therefore not surprising that most of the communication is about coordination, because this is actually a very important part of their social life.”
Origins of the language
Bonobos and chimpanzees are the closest genetic relatives for humans. Research suggests that the last joint ancestor of these species – which probably roamed the earth 7 million and 13 million years ago – would have the ability to communicate with the same basic building blocks of language bonobos.
The researchers behind this study said that Bonobos almost resemble humanity in the past.
And this research raises questions about what happened to such a long time ago, which prompted old people to develop and develop a more complex form of verbal communication.
“If bonobos and chimpanzees have many of these building blocks in their natural communication systems, it can help us understand what the top point of people has jumped into a much more complex language,” said Sara Skiba, a research scientist and director of communication for the monkey initiative, a bonobo research option in the Moines, Iowa. Skiba was not involved in the new study.
Bonobos are difficult to study in the wild. They live in a fragmented habitat in the Congo, which has experienced human conflicts in recent years.
The species is endangered and its population is probably less than 20,000, said Martin Surbeck, assistant professor at the department for human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and author of the study.
“Bonobos really have this unique opportunity to keep a kind of mirror for humanity,” said Surbeck. “I think they offer a unique opportunity to get right so that we really understand each other in a way that would not be possible without them, and I think they think we lose a lot, part of our heritage, to a certain extent.”
This article was originally published on nbcnews.com
