Bonobos talk like Human Babies, Study Finds

Bonobos talk just like human babies, a new study found.

For this study, the research team examined a group of 39 bonobos living in a wild community in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The team picked these animals because they are Homo sapiens' closest relatives. Bonobos are also known for being very talkative animals that frequently "peep."

To study how these animals communicate, the researchers recorded

the peeps as well as what the bonobos were doing when they peeped. The researchers found that the peeps were mostly the same acoustically when the bonobos were in neutral and positive situations, such as eating, traveling or resting. When a negative aspect of a situation arises, such as a predatory, the peeps started to vary significantly.

"When I studied the bonobos in their native setting in Congo, I was struck by how frequent their peeps were, and how many different contexts they produce them in," lead investigator, Zanna Clay of the University of Birmingham's School of Psychology, said. "It became apparent that because we couldn't always differentiate between peeps, we needed [to] understand the context to get to the root of their communication."

Clay added, "It appears that the more we look, the more similarity we find between animals and humans."
The research team concluded that bonobos' speech has "functional flexibility," which means that the animals can voice a wide array of emotions via the same sound. Only humans were believed to have this type of speech. Babies as early as three to four months tend to use squeals or growls to communicate different emotions.

The researchers noted that more studies are needed to fully understand how bonobos communicate with one another.

The study was published in the journal, PeerJ.