Humans can distinguish between certain ape languages
Published: Tuesday, Dec 19th 2023, 12:00
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Humans can distinguish between certain monkey species based on their language. According to a new Geneva study, it is not only how closely related the monkey species is to humans that determines whether the human brain is able to identify the sounds of a monkey species.
In contrast to previous studies, the researchers showed that the frequency of a monkey species' sounds also plays a role, as the University of Geneva announced on Tuesday. If the frequency is similar to that of humans, study participants recognized the species better.
According to the research team, this discovery should help to better understand how the human brain has evolved. After all, humans also need sounds such as "Aaaah" or "Oh!" in addition to speech in order to communicate, as the University of Geneva emphasized.
In order to test whether the human brain is able to assign sounds to a monkey species, the researchers played various sounds to study participants. They published the results in the journal "Cerebral Cortex Communications".
Same areas of the brain activated
This showed that the study participants were able to recognize the sounds of macaques and chimpanzees. In these monkey species, the same brain region was activated in the brains of the study participants as when recognizing human sounds.
However, in the sounds of bonobos, which are also close relatives of humans, the affected brain areas were far less activated, as the university explained. At the same time, the assignment of sounds was random in this ape species.
Do we understand the language of the apes?
The calls of bonobos are very shrill and can resemble those of some birds. According to the researchers, this acoustic distance in relation to the frequencies used by humans explains our inability to decode the calls.
In the next step, the researchers now want to find out whether humans are also able to decode the meaning of the monkeys' sounds.
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