Scientists have thought these calls were innate and âfixed,â that is, that the calls themselves donât have any flexibility and canât be changed or modified. These kinds of chimpanzee referential calls are intriguing on many levels. She realized then that over time she had come to understand some of the referential calls of her study group. Boysen could hear the chimps vocalizing, and even though she couldnât see them, and she had no information about their menu that day, she knew they were eating grapes. She was sitting in her office one day while the chimps were being fed by an assistant nearby. Researcher Sally Boysen found that out when she worked on chimp cognition studies at Ohio State University. And chimps can have distinct grunts for different types of food. These âreferential callsâ can communicate important information to other members of the group who then react appropriatelyârushing away from news of a predator, running in toward a food call. No matter where they live, chimpanzees use specific calls to identify particular objectsâa predator, for instance, or the discovery of a food source.

Starting in 2010, researchers from the University of York and the University of Zurich took advantage of a unique opportunity to set up a study when nine chimps from a Netherlands Zoo were transferred to a zoo in Scotland with its own group of nine chimps.

Vicki joins Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson to explain what chimps may have to teach us about the evolution of human language. And it all came from a study involving âDutchâ chimps, âScottishâ chimps, and the way they communicated with one another over the issue of apples when they met.

Photo: Jamie Norris.Ī new study has shown that chimpanzees may possess some of the building blocks of language after all, something scientists have hotly debated for years (and will continue to, apparently). Louis, a chimpanzee from the Edinburgh group.

Chimpanzee sounds mp3