bonobo44
08.06.06, 20:55
Małpy w naturze porozumiewają się łącząc słowa i to bynajmniej nie tylko te
najbliżej spokrewnione z człowiekiem:
Do tej pory wiadomo było, że człowiek potrafi nauczyć małpę posługiwania się
językiem, na który składać się może nawet kilkaset pojęć.
Po raz pierwszy dowiedziono, że małpy tworzą w swoich społecznościach własny
język, oparty na komunikacji werbalnej. W ten sposób pada kolejny bastion
zarezerwowany przez homo wyłącznie dla siebie: komunikacja językowa
jako "typowo ludzki" przejaw świadomości i kultury społecznej.
<<Last Updated: Thursday, 18 May 2006, 07:52 GMT 08:52 UK
Monkeys 'string words together'
The first evidence monkeys can string "words" together to communicate in a
similar way to humans has been found.
Putty-nosed monkeys in West Africa share the human ability to combine
different sounds to mean different things, according to researchers.
St Andrews University, UK, scientists found the creatures, in Nigeria's
Gashaka Gumti National Park, used two main call types to warn of predators.
But a particular sequence of calls also appeared to mean something else.
The scientists identified two call types - "pyows" and "hacks" - which the
monkeys use to alert each other to danger; but found a string of pyows warned
of a loitering leopard, while a burst of hacks indicated a hovering eagle.
This is the first good example of animal calls being combined in meaningful
ways
A sentence made up of several pyows, followed by a few hacks, told the group
to move to safer ground.
'Ignore meaning'
Dr Kate Arnold, a primate psychologist, discovered the phenomena by playing
variations of the calls back to the monkeys to see how they behaved.
This showed they could encode fresh information by combining two existing
calls, rather than creating a new sound, she said.
"These calls were not produced randomly and a number of distinct patterns
emerged," she said.
"The pyow-hack sequence means something like 'let's go', whereas the pyows by
themselves have multiple functions and the hacks are generally used as alarm
calls.
"This is the first good example of animal calls being combined in meaningful
ways.
"The implications of this research are that primates, at least, may be able
to ignore the usual relationship between an individual call and any meaning
that it might convey under certain circumstances."
The research has been carried out over the past three years, and has been
published in the scientific journal Nature. >>
