Monday, December 05, 2005

PARLEZ-VOUS MONKEY?

Shades of Dr. Doolittle!

This definitely belongs in the "I-didn't-know-that!" department. To most humans "monkey talk" sounds the same but it appears this isn't so. Primate researchers in Japan have discovered that monkeys have an accent depending on where they live.

A research team analyzed voice tones of two groups of the same species of primates, the Japanese Yakushima macaque. One group comprised 23 monkeys living in the southern Japanese island of Yakushima and the other group consisted of 30 descendants from the same tribe that had moved to another area. The end result indicated that the island group had a tone approximately 110 hertz higher on average than the one take taken to central Japan.
A researcher concluded that the monkeys living on Yakushima Island have an accent with a higher tone due to the amount of tall trees growing on the island that tend to block their voices.

Of course! It's so...logical!

This leads to the logical and correct assumption that monkeys living on Mount Ohira do not have to gibber (that's monkey talk) as high because the trees are low.
Researchers also conclude that their findings may be a clue to the origins of the human language.

Thinking further along this line of thinking, perhaps further research should be conducted to ascertain whether humans living in heavily wooded areas speak louder than those living in wide open spaces.

It's worth looking into - or hearing about!

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