Monkey See, Monkey Do or Monkey Hear, Monkey See

Monkey See, Monkey Do or Monkey Hear, Monkey Do

All animals have their own ways of communicating with one another, whether it be a honeybee that performs a “wiggle dance” when it reaches its hive to let the other bees know the location of a flower full of nectar, or the vigorous wagging of your puppy’s tale when you come home from work to express it’s happy to see you. Yes, animals can communicate within their species, but does that mean they can use language like humans do? By definition, language is a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences (Goldstein, 2011). Animal communication is said to lack the properties of human language, but can monkeys use language in a way similar to humans?

There have been recent studies that have found that the language abilities of some monkeys are much more sophisticated that believed in the past. Just like humans, monkeys cannot live in their troops without some way of communicating with each other. Group members need ways to influence and inform each other, which is what drives languages (Sakrison, 2008). All primates use visual cues, auditory calls, and olfactory signals to communicate with members of their troop, but some primates have developed more complex, specialized forms of auditory communication- language.

The Diana monkeys, Cambell’s and the Putty-nosed guenons are said to be some of the cleverest species of monkeys in the language department. These species of monkeys can combine calls in different ways, using rules of grammar, to make create sentence-like messages that turn sounds into language. The fact that some species of monkeys use forms of grammar and semantics just like humans do to form language is pretty crazy. I feel as though this proves that some monkeys can use language in similar ways as us.  They also use semantics or signals that convey meaning and refer to features in the world (Sakrison, 2008). Monkeys use different sequences of “pyows”, “hacks”, and “boom” among many other calls to communicate within their troop and other species of monkeys. For example, male monkeys called “boom boom” to gather other monkeys to them, but “boom boom krak-oo krak-oo” meant that a tree or branch was about to fall. Adding a “hak-oo” to that sequence turned it into a territorial warning against stray monkeys from neighboring groups. Multiple “krak-oo” calls added to an original “krak” meant not only that a leopard was in the area, but also that it posed an immediate threat (Ouattara, Lemasson, & Zuberbuhler, 2009). Every predator has a different alarm call.

Did you know there are also multilingual primates? In a Nature documentary, eight different species of monkeys were filmed living and listening together. Each species has their own language and way of communicating with their troops, which makes it incredible that all eight species understand each other. There are about 120 different sounds that they need to remember. Watch the clip and see how clever monkeys really are.

Multilingual Monkeys

 

 “Generating meaning with finite means in Campbell’s monkeys.” By Karim Ouattara, Alban Lemasson, and Klaus Zuberbuhler. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106 No. 48, December 7, 2009.

“Clever Monkeys: Monkeys and Language.” Angela Sakrison. 2009 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/clever-monkeys/monkeys-and-language/3948/

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

 

 

 

 

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