KSU biology professor Dr. Jared Taglialatela discovered that chimpanzees learn attention getting sounds from observing their mothers.
Taglialatela, with a three man research team, observed a community of 158 captive chimpanzees at the Michale E. Keeling Center of Comparative Medicine and Research in Bastrop, TX to determine how particular attention getting sounds are passed down from one generation to the next. The study revealed that three-fourths of the chimpanzees raised by their mothers made attention getting sounds, while only one-third of those raised by humans did.
Taglialatela defined attention getting sounds as a particular vocalization such as a “raspberry” or “kiss” to illicit a response from an observer outside the compound.
In the study, the research team ran three trials under two separate conditions with each chimp in a social environment. For the first condition, an observer brandished a food reward and directed attention at the ape in question. In the second condition, the observer displayed the same opportunity for food reward but directed their attention to something other than the chimp under observation. If the test subject made an attention getting sound at any point during the trial they were grouped with other attention getters.
Upon analyzing their collected data the research team noticed the correlation between the likelihood a chimpanzee would make the desired sound and whether or not they were raised by their biological mother. Furthermore, the team noticed chimps would often make the same attention getting sounds as their mother would.
Though it was less common, some chimpanzees raised by humans still emitted attention getting calls. Because it was determined that these calls are largely learned through social interaction, Taglialatela said he is interested to look deeper into how chimpanzees raised by humans still managed to learn this behavior.
Until this study, it was believed that developing communication through social learning did not occur with primates. According to Taglialatela scientists believed that learning skill was developed later in the evolution of modern man. This study proves otherwise and can lead scientists to rethink how man learned language. “Perhaps down the road if we learn a little bit more about the brain regions that are responsible for mediating this behavior when we start thinking about early development disorders in humans like autism. It may be that we learn how these behaviors arise and how they are handled by the brain… we may be able to develop interventions for really young children,” Taglialatela said.
Sarah Pope, a research assistant for Taglialatela and 2011 graduate, has analyzed data for the professor’s previous studies and offered insight on the recent findings.
“The study sheds light on how humans may have started to communicate… especially with chimpanzees being human’s most common ancestor,” said Pope.
The study was published in the most recent issue of Biology Letters, a well-accepted online science journal based out of Great Britain.
Taglialatela said he looks to continue his 14-year career in primate behavior research by observing a community of 100 chimpanzees in their natural habitat in Uganda.
“It is a unique group of chimpanzees because it is what’s called a dry forest habitat that borders savanna grassland… the chimpanzees have to range over a relatively wide territory. For someone who studies communication I have to think about a very similar scenario early humans might have found themselves in. How do they use communicative signals to coordinate group interaction?”
Taglialatela expressed excitement that this particular community could exhibit unique means of communication as a result of their surroundings.
