ArticleeLife2024
Recursive self-embedded vocal motifs in wild orangutans.
Article in eLife, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Silence as an Overlooked Catalyzer for Primate Vocal Evolution.Evolutionary anthropology · 2026Article
- Humans, but not zebra finches, produce spontaneously isochronous song through the lifespan.iScience · 2026Article
- Rhythm and timing in laughter reveal that human vocal plasticity falls on a hominid continuum.Communications biology · 2026Article
- The Forms and Structures of Chimpanzee Algae Fishing.American journal of primatology · 2026Article
- The Ontogeny of Vocal Rhythms in a Non-Human Primate.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Dual Sound Sources in Siamangs Generate Individually Rhythmic and Temporally Coordinated Vocal Emissions.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- The Emergence of a Universal Rhythmic Feature: Simple Models Can Produce Categorical Rhythms.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Novel Approach to Inter-Onset-Interval Ratio Uncovers Music-Like Rhythmic Patterns in Budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus) Warble Song.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Twice times two: Dual mechanism for double rhythmic meter in orangutans and the evolution of human song.iScience · 2026Article
- The neurobiology of human sequential signal prediction: Insights from language, music, and mathematics.Neuroscience research · 2026Review
- Hidden assumptions of integer ratio analyses in bioacoustics and music.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Zebra finch tutees not only share the melody but also the rhythm of their tutor's song.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The role of musical pitch in long-distance defensive signaling.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Third-order self-embedded vocal motifs in wild orangutans, and the selective evolution of recursion.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- An evolutionary model of rhythmic accelerando in animal vocal signalling.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Vocal Learning Versus Speech Evolution: Untangling a False Equivalence.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Rhythmic categories in horse gait kinematics.Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
- Article
- Dance displays in gibbons: biological and linguistic perspectives on structured, intentional, and rhythmic body movement.Primates; journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Rhythmic Roots: The Adaptive Functions of Vocal Isochrony and Its Role in Human Music and Language Evolution.Psihologijske teme = Psychological themes = Psychological topics · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Recursive procedures that allow placing a vocal signal inside another of a similar kind provide a neuro-computational blueprint for syntax and phonology in spoken language and human song. There are, however, no known vocal sequences among nonhuman primates arranged in self-embedded patterns that evince vocal recursion or potential incipient or evolutionary transitional forms thereof, suggesting a neuro-cognitive transformation exclusive to humans. Here, we uncover that wild flanged male orangutan long calls feature rhythmically isochronous call sequences nested within isochronous call sequences, consistent with two hierarchical strata. Remarkably, three temporally and acoustically distinct call rhythms in the lower stratum were not related to the overarching rhythm at the higher stratum by any low multiples, which suggests that these recursive structures were neither the result of parallel non-hierarchical procedures nor anatomical artifacts of bodily constraints or resonances. Findings represent a case of temporally recursive hominid vocal combinatorics in the absence of syntax, semantics, phonology, or music. Second-order combinatorics, 'sequences within sequences', involving hierarchically organized and cyclically structured vocal sounds in ancient hominids may have preluded the evolution of recursion in modern language-able humans.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.