I thought THAT question was settled a long time ago.
Posted on 04/09/2013 10:10:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Scientists claim to have identified the missing link between human speech and monkey chatter.
Researchers analysed the distinctive "lip-smacking" sounds made by wild gelada baboons of the Ethopian highlands and found striking similarities to human speech.
Their noises are so human-like that Thore Bergman, an assistant professor with the University of Michigan, thought he heard people talking while he was hanging out with the creatures.
"I would find myself frequently looking over my shoulder to see who was talking to me, but it was just the geladas," he said. "It was unnerving to have primate vocalizations sound so much like human voices."
Male geladas smack their lips to produce a distincive "wobble" in their calls to females. These sounds follow a similar tempo to human speech.
Bergman suggested the research identified a "plausible" explanation of how human speech evolved.
He said: “The ability to produce complex sounds might have come first. Then, when we could do that, we could attach meanings and communicate in more sophisticated ways. Or it could be that, as we needed to communicate more, we developed an ability to produce a greater variety of sounds.”
Other monkeys smack their lips while eating, but geladas are the only species which do so when communicating. It is believed monkeys living in large groups have stronger vocal skills.
“It’s a very complex social system. They have some of the largest groups of any primate,” Bergman said. “These very large group structures may be linked to vocal complexity. There’s some evidence across primate that bigger groups make more sounds.”
The research can be found in the journal Current Biology. According to the study's abstract, the gelada baboons' "independent evolution of a speech-like vocalization involving complex facial movements provides initial support for the hypothesis that lip-smacking was a precursor to the emergence of human speech".
And you sir, need to banned for posting an affront to anyone not prepared for such a disturbing image.
Several large contradictions in that little poem. Monkeys(actually apes)do kill their young and eat them. Chimps regularly kill other monkeys and use them for food. Monkeys sleep around all the time, they don’t mate for life. Who ever wrote this poem needs to do a little more study on them.
I thought THAT question was settled a long time ago.
My son believes that Conservatves are descended from Golden Retrievers.
We are fiercly loyal to our master, we understand love and happiness and we know how to hunt.
Monkey lip smacking. I guess that settles it. :-)
I should be ashamed of myself....
“I would find myself frequently looking over my shoulder to see who was talking to me, but it was just the geladas,” he said. “It was unnerving to have primate vocalizations sound so much like human voices.”
What did they say? “Hey bub...get outta my tree”? or “thats nacho cheez...its mine.”?
Remarkably close to Kenya...? Seems there’s a lot of important history over there we need to discover.
My God, she’s a salt vampire!
Talking smack PING
Gee - and I thought the missing link would be a genomic identity that shows the clear progression from primate to human, as opposed to the sound a baboon makes when finishing a slurpee at 7-11.
Horses IS PEOPLE!!
< /peanut butter lip smack talk >
Ok, so let me get this right:
Monkey’s able to smack their lips explains vocal cords in human throats?!?!
Right? These people are grasping at anything and everything! IDIOTS!
Piers interviews Hussein.
Good grief! Enough already!!
He wanted to become part of the pck but was not accepted, to stupid.
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