Monkeys Have the Vocal Anatomy to Speak Like Humans, but Not the Brains - Listen to What They Might Sound Like

Could your brain speak through a monkey's body? Yes. New research shows that monkeys have the vocal cords to communicate in a more linguistic manner, but their brains hold them back.

Darwin originally thought that apes and monkeys could not speak like humans because they lacked the brains for it, but later anthropologists adopted the idea that primates were held back by their vocal cords instead. We have been using that assumption for over four decades.

A macaque monkey's vocal tract has been analyzed, with the data published today in "Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready". The monkey has been determined to be capable of producing five basic vocal sounds/vowels that underlie most human languages. There is no vocal anatomical impediment. Monkeys have a speech-ready anatomy, but not a speech-ready brain.

Asif Ghazanfar and his team at Princeton University used x-ray imaging of a macaque monkey's vocal tract to learn how their vocalization functioned. A barium-based contrast agent creates a visual profile of the entire vocal tract as various sounds and "calls" are made. Measuring the tract while food was consumed allowed the limits of expansion and stretching to be known for sound processing.

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The researchers took 99 tract configurations they had observed, and computed theoretical sounds and frequencies monkeys anatomy would make if their brains could do it. Ghazanfar's colleague, William Tecumseh Sherman Fitch III, was able to produce 5 distinct vowels, matching the human A, E, I, O, U. monkeys just lack the neural control over their vocal muscles to configure speech like we do. Put a human brain in a monkey, and these scientists say you could speak.

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This is a simulation and guess work, but the computer generated a human voice saying "will you marry me", and a hypothetical monkey voice saying the same:

Simulated human voice
HumanWYMM.wav

Simulated monkey voice
OurMonkeyWYMM.wav

This may or may not be what a monkey would sound like. Given that the human simulation is decent, it's reasonable to assume the monkey simulation would also be accurate.

It's kinda like the idea from Jurassic Park III, where Dr. Grant uses the 3D printed vocal cords to speak like a raptor:

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Other researchers have confirmed monkeys have what it takes anatomically to speak like us, but can't because of their brains.

Others, however, contest that primates can't produce human-like communication sounds, and think monkeys or apes could do it for real someday. There is currently not enough research to confirm their claims.

“There’s a growing body of evidence from all great ape species that there are few neural limitations,”, says Philip Lieberman at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who adds that: “Our closest relatives can vocally learn new vowel-like and consonant-like calls, both in the wild and in captivity.”

There is Rocky, the phonetic mimicking ape:

And we all know about parrots who mimic human sounds.

There is no question nonhuman animals communicate, but the level of complexity they can ever achieve is limited. Whether communication methods are languages, is up to debate. We don't know enough about how animal calls are structured, if certain sounds are words that are reused to communicate as a language itself. Since language is conceptual to assign sound to something, nonhuman animals may indeed have language.

One thing to note, is that apes can't naturally produce the range of sounds a one year old baby can. There seems to be a definite limitation in there somewhere. If it's not anatomical in their vocals, then that begs the question where is the limitation, if not the brain or consciousness?

This has implications for evolutionary theory, as the paper says:

"Our findings imply that the evolution of human speech capabilities required neural changes rather than modifications of vocal anatomy."

Anthropologists will be able to take this understanding of the vocal tract and further develop an idea about how we developed language ourselves.

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Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.

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References:

• Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready
• Monkeys should be able to talk just like us – so why don’t they?
• Why monkeys can’t talk—and what they would sound like if they could

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@krnel
2016-12-09, 6:03pm