MISSING LINK between HUMANS and MONKEYS FOUND

Scientists claim to have identified the missing link between human speech and monkey chatter. Researchers analysed the distinctive "lip-smacking" sounds made by wild gelada baboons of the Ethopian highlands and found striking similarities to human speech. Their noises are so human-like that Thore Bergman, an assistant …

[Christoph]

ObJoke

I thought the missing link between monkey chatter and human speech was YouTube comments.

[wowfood]

Re: Missing Link between humans and monkies found

I was expecting PE Teachers

[ukgnome]

Re: Missing Link between humans and monkies found

I was expecting Apple users

[Ian Yates]

Re: ObJoke

I love the progression of replies to this and how they were increasingly poorly received

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Re: ObJoke

Millennium hand and shrimp, I told em I told em, they'd only run out, buggrit, buggrem, doorsteps, I told em, I told em, don't try the blarney gobble on me, juggins, buggrit, buggrit, millennium hand and shrimp

[Scott Pedigo]

Re: ObJoke

The Apple-using PE teachers who are uploading video to YouTube must be frothing at the mouth while grinding their teeth, resulting in quivering lips.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: ObJoke

I always thought it was Steve Ballmer

[Peter Johnstone]

Re: ObJoke

Creationists would have been ironic!

[Silverburn]

Re: ObJoke

I'm surprised nobody has mention politicians yet. Is that because Baboon levels of intelligence are too high to form a valid comparison...?

[Nuke]

Lip Smacking eh?

"Male geladas smack their lips to produce a distincive "wobble" in their calls to females."

So that's how to woo the ladies! So I've not been smacking my lips and wobbling enough all this time?

[Armando 123]

Re: Lip Smacking eh?

Generally they've been smacking mine. Alright, slapping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Lip Smacking eh?

Works very well, never knew why, though.

[Sandra Greer]

Re: Lip Smacking eh?

Yes, they sit on their construction sites having lunch and do that. Never noticed the ladies liked it though.

[I think so I am?]

M Thatcher?

She was rather draconian and took a sledge hammer approach to most things.

I think see was more likely Iron mans grandmother though, being the Iron lady and everything.

[Forget It]

Bergman said: “The ability to produce complex sounds might have come first. Then, when we could do that, we could attach meanings and communicate in more sophisticated ways."

So evolutionary advantage not involved from the onset?

What on earth are you "dawkin about"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bergman said", but what he wanted to say, is that we first wanted to attach meanings and communicate in more sophisticated ways and then started to produce complex sounds. First we want to have a faster internet and then we start to produce one. I am starting to feel it would have been more fun with science than with computers.

Joke alert, if not anon. My bet would be that that started at the same time.

[Ageless Stranger]

missing link between human speech and monkey chatter

Teenagers?

[P. Lee]

Re: missing link between human speech and monkey chatter

> Teenagers?

I didn't think they spoke!

[Rabbit80]

For anyone who wants to hear the sound of a male Gelada

The Beeb have a sound clip in their story!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22067192

[Ageless Stranger]

Re: For anyone who wants to hear the sound of a male Gelada

or simply listen to any song by Justin Bieber

[NomNomNom]

"He said: “The ability to produce complex sounds might have come first. Then, when we could do that, we could attach meanings and communicate in more sophisticated ways. Or it could be that, as we needed to communicate more, we developed an ability to produce a greater variety of sounds.”"

Or maybe God did created us by magic.

Just sayin'

[Mystic Megabyte]

it's bananas

The Aquatic ape hypothesis of Elaine Morgan is much more likely.

Right or wrong it's a thought provoking read anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Morgan_%28writer%29

[The last doughnut]

Re: it's bananas

Plenty of those at the pool where I try to swim lengths

[Torquemada28]

Re: it's bananas

"The Aquatic ape hypothesis of Elaine Morgan is much more likely.

Right or wrong it's a thought provoking read anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Morgan_%28writer%29"

.

.

Here's a link to provoke a little more skeptical thought.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4357

Brian Dunning FTW!

[Professor Clifton Shallot]

“The ability to produce complex sounds might have come first."

It might well have. But in terms of language, comprehension necessarily precedes production so we need to be examining what meaning if any is attached to these noises by these apes before we can claim to have made any great strides in plotting the evolution of speech.

[Professor Clifton Shallot]

Re: “The ability to produce complex sounds might have come first."

"It is not about language, but speech"

Fair enough.

They've found a monkey whose articulation is comparable with our own and that's certainly interesting and fun but doesn't add a great deal to the field as this articulation is not present in our closer primate relatives.

If Mr Hammill could actually lend some weight to one or other side of " “The ability to produce complex sounds might have come first. Then, when we could do that, we could attach meanings and communicate in more sophisticated ways. Or it could be that, as we needed to communicate more, we developed an ability to produce a greater variety of sounds.”" that would be more interesting.

[Professor Clifton Shallot]

Re: “The ability to produce complex sounds might have come first."

Ta. That is indeed interesting.

[P. Lee]

Re: “The ability to produce complex sounds might have come first."

Also missing was the other article in the same publication: "A paradox in the evolution of primate vocal learning."

I only read the summary, but my understanding from elsewhere is that humans can't develop language if they aren't exposed to complex language. Its a bit of a chicken and egg situation. I think there's also a bit of a time limit to learn to speak "in the wild." 10 years IIRC.

I'm also a bit suspicious of the "evolution" tag. I'm not sure that Invoking The Holy Word That May Never Be Denied makes your research valid.

[Ross K]

Unfortunately...

...Eadon escaped from his cage before the scientists were finished with him.

Just like a monkey, the noise coming from his mouth wasn't speech - just random babbling.

They did find that he was good at flinging his shite at others though...

[Andyf]

Re: Missing Link between humans and monkeys found

It's called alcohol, judging from the subhuman behavior seen in most town centres in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings. Gets progressively louder and more agressive, only understandable by the similarly pissed up, and mostly done to impress females?

I appreciate that it's an insulting comparison, and I'd like to apologise in advance to any monkeys reading this.

Beer, for obvious reasons.

[Anonymous Coward]

The next experiment

Has to be giving beer to baboons to see if they then claim to be able to fix all the world's problems before throwing an arm around the nearest primatologist, slurring 'I luv you - I do!' and toppling gently into the nearest mangrove swamp singing the song about the pixies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare and contrast the BBC clip

Sierra Sounds

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDAlQzPhx74

Hear either in a dark wood and I would be "somewhat disconcerted"

[Cipher]

Article title is a bit disingenuous...

...this *startling news* that monkeys communicate with sound and to some it sometimes sounds like people talking in the distance is the *Missing Link*?

Really?

Many animals communicate with sound, i.e. whales and dolphins. This is hardly the Missing Link...

[P. Lee]

Re: Article title is a bit disingenuous...

> Many animals communicate with sound, i.e. whales and dolphins. This is hardly the Missing Link...

Evolution is assumed to be true, therefore all facts must support it, whether they are relevant or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof that humanity only developed language so they could chat up the opposite sex?

Come to think of it, what else is there to talk about that really matters? Good evolutionary priorities I guess. :)

Paris, because I'd be happy to hit on her someday!!

[Metal70s]

They missed one so early on

They missed obviously Flavor Flav all along.

[TRussert]

Hmmmmm. Sounds like some body is desperate for academic credentials.

[JoeJ]

Foolishness

This story shows how foolish so-called scientists can be, and how much more foolish the editor who wrote the title is. This is pure speculation, guess work, nothing more.

[Esskay]

Foolish "Foolishness" Foolishness

The "missing link" header is inaccurate, if only because the primates being described are contemporaries of humans - it's akin to a foolish creationist thinking that evolution means we evolved from gorillas (when, in fact, we share a relatively recent common ancestor).

However in terms of vocalisations humans appear to be far and above anything yet discovered or heard in primates, so the observations of this species of primate, and their apparently advanced communications could well serve as a contemporary "link" between ourselves and primates that has been "missing" from research so far.

I'd say the use of the term is sneaky, but the assumption from the reader is that the term is used in the well-worn context of evolution, to the exclusion of all others - a foolish assumption to make.

Or, since we're on the Reg, it could be someone having a bit of fun with daily mail-esque headline fibbery.

[Anonymous Coward]

He said:

It could be one or the other. Let me say a few more words for my moments of fame. There I'm done. It was fun getting paid to hang out with monkeys. Can I have some more money now?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like some members of GOP in Congress or the officers of NRA or those religious nuts who speak in tongues... Now I know why I don't understand them. They are stuck in pre-sensible/logical speech era of the evolution....

[tempemeaty]

vocalisation vs lips

The sinus cavity, throat and larynx construction are what make the sounds possible that humans use. The lips approach doesn't really deal with it. I give the man an "A" for effort though. Perhaps if they can find an example of any species that has changed it's chromosome count and lived on to create a variant species, they might have a case for apes becoming human, for instance apes have 48 and humans 46. That might go a LOT further in figuring out how these internal structures used in human vocalization changed so much.

[rav]

Hmm...Pub Banter!

But can monkeys throw darts!

[TRussert]

What about talking birds? They mimic human words almost flawlessly. Would they qualify as an even closer missing link?

[Wanson]

Misleading Title

This Register article is badly titled and their use of the term 'missing link' is extremely misleading. 'Missing link' in evolutionary terms suggests some species that shares a common ancestor with humans and monkeys, of which there are already plenty.

The original research article that reports these findings does not use the term nor does it claim that these monkeys are ancestors of humans. It is merely describing a behaviour in these primates that may explain how human language evolved.

[BrentRBrian]

Hearing human speech

Working around lip smacking moneys all day ... now they hear human speech ... me thinks he needs to take a mental health day.

I remember being invited to a series of high level management meetings ... lot of lip smacking ... even thought I could make out a bit of intelligent, human grade, speech, from time to time ... I took a day off ... and never went back to those level of meetings again. Problem solved.

[Vote Real - Vote Paul]

A baboon, a dog, and a parrot....

Sometimes when my dog barks he sounds like he is speaking. Looks like I’ve found the “missing link between humans and dogs”. So when should I expect my $20M check from the Gov.? In 1995 a budgerigar (talking bird) named Puck was credited by Guinness World Records as having the largest vocabulary of any bird, at 1,728 words. So does this mean we used to have feathers & “evolved” into what we are today. Or maybe we came about by means of a baboon, parrot, & dog ‘gett’in jiggy with it” ménage à trois style. This might explain how Obummer got elected…., and re-elected. Can I get my funding now?

[Gray Ham]

Just a thought ...

Wouldn't this only be significant if it could be shown that the Geladas' vocalisations predate contact with humans? otherwise, it may just be that they have learned to imitate human sounds. Although, that might be interesting in another way ...