A new study on 5000 different sound recordings of chimpanzees, known as the genetically closest living thing to humans, has resulted. Among individuals of the species, a language with distinctive vocal stresses was discovered for the first time.
Although we see the opposite very often, by talking our communication skillsWe think that it is the most important thing that distinguishes us from other living things. In fact, your understanding of the information given by attaching a meaning and sound to the shapes you see while reading these lines, that is, “writing” has developed as a result of this skill throughout history.
On the other hand, chimpanzees, which are genetically closest to humans, have developed some ways to communicate among themselves, just like other living things. Of course, genetic affinity between us leads to a startling and at the same time astonishing resemblance of these communication pathways. A study conducted in the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast, a country known for its rainforests in Africa, found that chimpanzees used verbal and spoken language brought to light.
Chimpanzees are making sentences! But how?
Taken from a group of 46 different chimpanzees living in the national park, 5000 thousand different sound recordings with a total length of 900 hours analyzed. It was determined how chimpanzees use monophonic calls in sequences, how these sounds are arranged in sequences, and how independent sound sequences are combined.
It has been discovered that chimpanzees have different meanings depending on the place and context they use. 12 different call types such as grunt, hum, scream, whine, shout revealed. Binary sounds combined with single sounds were categorized as “bigram” and triple sounds as “trigram”.
A network map of how these expressions are combined in different ways is then generated. How different types of bigrams and trigrams are ordered or recombined are revealed. Trigram, that is, a gram between the triple sound sequence, that is, the binary sounds. combined in different ways understood.
Tatiana Bortolato of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who was part of the research team“Chimpsshows that they have developed a much more complex voice communication system than previously thought.” made a statement. For example, single grunts are predominantly when it comes to foodgasping for breath greeting sound was used as. If chimpanzees detect a threat, they emit a single hum, but in their bilateral communication these hums are fainter.
The 390 different sound sequences discovered can shed light on the evolution of human languages:
At the end of the process we just mentioned, the researchers; Combining 12 different sound sequences with different combinations and having different meanings. 390 different sound sequences, i.e. sentence structures they arrived. However, the number of these sound sequences may be higher than detected. Because 12 different sounds have the potential to be encoded in hundreds of different ways. In other words, chimpanzees may use these sounds in new ways in the future to incorporate what they cannot express into their verbal communication.
“We see a structure that goes beyond the accepted understanding of primates, although it may seem much less than the infinite number of different sequences that would be produced by humans,” the researchers said. By studying the vocal sequences of chimpanzees, a socially complex species like humans, we can find out where we came from and what to understand how our unique language has evolved.We are trying to bring a new perspective”.
You can access the published scientific article in the journal Nature Communications Biology.