Can Chimpanzees Speak Like Humans? New Study Sparks Debate

The finding could challenge old assumptions regarding ape psychology, depicting how the 'circuitry' of language has evolved more than earlier envisaged.

A wild female chimpanzee produces vocalization in the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast in this undated handout image. Liran Samuni/Tai Chimpanzee Project/Handout via REUTERS

A group of scientists have discovered that chimpanzees are able to utter some words almost similar to humans.

Based on footage filmed in 1962, an international team of scientists, after carefully analyzing the 44-second video, noticed that members of the Ape Kingdom could say simple words like “mama”.

The finding could challenge old assumptions regarding ape psychology, depicting how the ‘circuitry’ of language has evolved more than earlier envisaged.

Currently, some researchers believe that chimpanzees and other related apes have the capacity to utter some words like humans.

Throughout the years, questions and myths regarding the capability of speech among apes continue to divide opinions among scientists.

While speech remains a significant form of communication, making humans unique, both sides of the debate will remain strong in their advocacy.

In the 1990s, the debate began with a series of extremely unethical experiments in which people tried to raise chimpanzees like humans.

For example, some researchers cited the case of Keith and Catherine Hayes who adopted a chimp to raise in 1947 as their basis for argument.

Keith and Catherine, who named their chimpanzee ‘Viki’, disclosed that the ape was able to utter simple words such as ‘mama’, ‘up’, and ‘cup’.

While these attempts provided little correlation, these early trials have either been dismissed on the basis that some of these chimps were separated from their families at a tender age.

However, some scientists believed that chimpanzees lacked the brain circuitry to combine jaw and voicebox control in a way that can produce speech sounds.

In a scientific paper authored after their research in Scientific Reports, the researchers contend that the analysis of these older cases has led to a belief that apes are incapable of speech.

Dr. Axel Ekström, the lead author, told MailOnline, “There has been an idea floating around neuroscience for a couple of years that the chimp cortex might have been holding them back.”

According to Ekström, who works at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, humans have the ability to overlap between the area of the brain responsible for moving the jaw and the region that controls the voice box compared to chimps.

“So, the idea was that this overlap unlocks syllabic speech of the kind we see in infants (“ba-ba-ba”), and which transitions in development to adult speech patterns,” Dr. Ekström told.

Additionally, scientific research dubbed the ‘Kuypers-Jürgens hypothesis’ indicates that chimpanzees don’t have this overlap, so they simply cannot produce speech like a human can.

This debate will continue to rage on with little or enough evidence to substantiate that chimpanzees are capable of human-like speech.