Language is generally perceived as unique to human beings. Furthermore, communicating in sentences is quite complicated and requires big brains. Nearly all animals make certain noises, which are ways of communicating, but some of our amazing close relatives have been found to use a similar way of communicating to ours... Yes, "Researchers have found that monkeys combine calls to make them meaningful in the same way that humans do" (Highfield, R. 2008). Now, this can be a step in understanding evolution of human language! This study was carried out among wild putty-nosed monkeys of West Africa , the most impressive outcome is "mixing different alarm calls to communicate new meanings to fellow members of a troop" by these creatures! Scientists have noted that the monkeys make two specific noises: "pyows", that mainly warn about approaching predators such as leopards; and "hacks" used in the same way but with regards to eagles. Even though, the two sounds have particular purposes, they also get combined in order to mean something different - such as "let's go".
This does sound very convincing!
ref:
- Highfield, R. (2008) Monkeys communicate in sentences available electronically at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/10/scimonk110.xml, accessed 16/03/2008 11:25 am
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