Bonobos Speak Like Human Babies, But Is It Communication? : SCIENCE : Tech Times

Bonobos Speak Like Human Babies, But Is It Communication? : SCIENCE : Tech Times: "Biologists and others traditionally believed that non-human primates utilized a single call to express a single idea. One sound might be used as a warning to a potential competitor for food or a mate, while another call would signal an alarm to a neighboring group. Using a single sound in different situations, an ability known as functional flexibility, was thought to be a characteristic possessed solely by humans. 

Human babies as young as three or four months have the ability to carry out calls with functional flexibility. These sounds are in addition to other calls directly related to emotions, such as crying when the baby experiences physical pain. 

Zanna Clay, a researcher from the University of Birmingham, was studying bonobos in the Congo when she noticed the animals were producing a peeping sound in addition to the normal grunts and pants the primates produce. 


"When I studied the bonobos in their native setting in Congo, I was struck by how frequent their peeps were, and how many different contexts they produce them in. It became apparent that because we couldn't always differentiate between peeps, we needed understand the context to get to the root of their communication," Clay said.

Researchers examined recordings of the peeps produced by the bonobos under differing conditions. Analysis revealed that these squeaky noises were identical, regardless of the events taking place in the lives of the primates when the calls were made. "



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