An ape who directly socialised with humans, has learned the vocal and breathing control found in human speech, according to new research. Koko the gorilla, famous for communicating with her keepers in American Sign Language, has developed breathing and grunting patterns associated with the ability to talk — something scientists thought was impossible.
Marcus Perlman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Nathaniel Clark at the University of California studied 71 hours of video footage of Koko interacting with her keepers and say that they have “found examples of Koko performing nine different, voluntary behaviours that required control over her vocalisation and breathing.” The 44-year-old ape’s sign-language training began in 1972, and she has spent most of her life working with humans.
The paper, published in the July issue of Animal Cognition, says that Koko can huff and grunt into a telephone, perform a fake cough, blow her nose, perform her version of a “raspberry” (folding her tongue lengthwise and blowing air through it), and blow into her hand as a communicative gesture.
“Koko shows the potential under the right conditions for apes to develop quite a bit of control over their vocal tract,” explained Perlman. In the 1930s and 40s, researchers raised chimpanzees alongside human children, attempting and failing to teach them to speak. Ever since, says Perlman, scientists believed “that apes could not control their vocalisations or breathing” — until now.
— Source: www.csmonitor.com
