Monkeys Found Using Primitive Linguistic Grammar
Bjorn Carey
FOX News
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If you're a putty-nosed monkey and you hear a friend whoop out a loud "pyow" call, you know there's a leopard sneaking around and it's time to boogie.
Similarly, if you hear a "hack," it means you should watch out for a hungry eagle.
A new study reveals that these monkeys can mix the two calls into a "pyow-hack" sequence to broadcast other types of information.
The findings, reported in the May 18 issue of the journal Nature, indicate that non-human primates can combine calls into higher-order sequences that have a particular meaning.
Putty-nosed monkeys, Cercopithecus nictitans, are about the size of a cat. They live among the trees in African rainforests.
If the male lets out a "pyow," the monkeys scramble away from the lower levels of the trees.
If they hear a "hack," they climb away from the canopy to avoid getting picked off by an eagle.
Researchers from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland followed a group of putty-nosed monkeys for two months and recorded the lead male's calls.
They observed that the males sometimes let out a combination of "pyow-hacks," which on average gets the pack moving a little quicker and further — up to 100 yards in half an hour — than either call on its own.
Bjorn Carey
FOX News
_______
If you're a putty-nosed monkey and you hear a friend whoop out a loud "pyow" call, you know there's a leopard sneaking around and it's time to boogie.
Similarly, if you hear a "hack," it means you should watch out for a hungry eagle.
A new study reveals that these monkeys can mix the two calls into a "pyow-hack" sequence to broadcast other types of information.
The findings, reported in the May 18 issue of the journal Nature, indicate that non-human primates can combine calls into higher-order sequences that have a particular meaning.
Putty-nosed monkeys, Cercopithecus nictitans, are about the size of a cat. They live among the trees in African rainforests.
If the male lets out a "pyow," the monkeys scramble away from the lower levels of the trees.
If they hear a "hack," they climb away from the canopy to avoid getting picked off by an eagle.
Researchers from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland followed a group of putty-nosed monkeys for two months and recorded the lead male's calls.
They observed that the males sometimes let out a combination of "pyow-hacks," which on average gets the pack moving a little quicker and further — up to 100 yards in half an hour — than either call on its own.
