ArticleScientific reports2024
Chimpanzee utterances refute purported missing links for novel vocalizations and syllabic speech.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 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
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Twice times two: Dual mechanism for double rhythmic meter in orangutans and the evolution of human song.iScience · 2026Article
- Rethinking Hominin Air Sac Loss in Light of Phylogenetically Meaningful Evidence.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Article
- Third-order self-embedded vocal motifs in wild orangutans, and the selective evolution of recursion.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Generative vocal plasticity in chimpanzees.iScience · 2025Article
- Vocal Learning Versus Speech Evolution: Untangling a False Equivalence.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Vowel- and Diphthong-Like Spectral Patterns in Sperm Whale Codas.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- Investigating the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in language evolution: insights from comparative neuroscience.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Review
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Nonhuman great apes have been claimed to be unable to learn human words due to a lack of the necessary neural circuitry. We recovered original footage of two enculturated chimpanzees uttering the word "mama" and subjected recordings to phonetic analysis. Our analyses demonstrate that chimpanzees are capable of syllabic production, achieving consonant-to-vowel phonetic contrasts via the simultaneous recruitment and coupling of voice, jaw and lips. 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.
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