A new study has suggested that chimpanzees might be capable of more than just grunts and hoots and that they might just need the right nurturing environment to unleash their vocal potential. The research, published in Scientific Reports, follows a small team of speech specialists and psychologists who analysed old videos. They found that three chimpanzees had learned to speak human words. They argue that this discovery suggests chimps are capable of speaking in basic language.
"In an online experiment, human listeners naive to the recordings' origins reliably perceived chimpanzee utterances as syllabic utterances, primarily as "ma-ma", among foil syllables. Our findings demonstrate that in the absence of direct data-driven examination, great ape vocal production capacities have been underestimated. Chimpanzees possess the neural building blocks necessary for speech," researchers wrote in the study.
In their research, the scientists highlighted an intriguing case from the past - a husband-and-wife team who adopted an infant chimp and raised it in their home, attempting to teach it simple words like "mama", "papa" and "cup". Despite their efforts, their work was dismissed over time, deemed unethical for separating the chimp from its natural mother.
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However, undeterred by this historical dismissal, the new team of researchers scoured through hours of old videos, searching for evidence for of chimps attempting human speech. They found that one particularly notable video from the husband-wife team's collection captured the chimpanzee uttering the word "papa" not once, but three-times, and even managing a solitary "cup". Another video showed a chimp clearly saying "mama". And from Italy, another clip showed a chimp making the same maternal utterance.
Researchers described these attempts as "essentially word-like". This, they suggest, indicates that given the right circumstances, great apes can indeed produce human-like speech. The study's authors urge the scientific community to re-evaluate past dismissals and to consider the potential of great apes with fresh eyes.
