inotternews.com

A news site about animals

Tag Archives: Monkday

Geladas Show Striking Similarities with Human Speech

Friendly lip-smacking, made by a large African monkey called a gelada show striking similarities with human speech, say scientists from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, published today in the journal Current Biology.

Geladas, close cousins of the baboon that only live in the remote mountains of Ethiopia, produce ‘unnerving’ sounds that can easily be mistaken for human voices.

The gelada is also known as the "bleeding heart baboon"

They believe the evidence points to lip-smacking- a friendly behavior displayed by many primates- being an evolutionary step towards speech.

“Our finding provides support for the lip-smacking origins of speech because it shows that this evolutionary pathway is plausible,” said lead scientist Prof Thore Bergman, “it demonstrates that non-human primates can vocalize while lip-smacking to produce speech-like sounds.”

Prof Bergman became fascinated by the geladas’ sounds while observing the monkeys in 2006.

“I would find myself frequently looking over my shoulder to see who was talking to me, but it was just the geladas.  It was unnerving to have primate vocalizations sound so much like human voices,” he said.

The new research showed that the rhythm of gelada lip-smacking closely mirrored the gaps between syllables in many human languages.  Some other primates such as apes and monkeys produce complex sounds, but Bergman says they don’t have the speech-like rhythm that geladas have.

I had never even heard of a gelada until today.  How fascinating.

First Angolan Colobus Monkey Birth for Brookfield

 

At the Brookfield Zoo, in Brookfield, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, an Angolan colobus monkey named Olivia, cradles her newborn in the Tropic World / Africa exhibit on March 20, 2013.  Born on March 9th, this is the first Angolan colobus monkey to be born at the Brookfield Zoo.  Though the adults have black fur with white trim, the babies are all white, and adorable as ever.

 

Happy Monkday :-)

Meet the Peruvian Night Monkey

The Peruvian night monkey (Aotus miconax) is one of the world’s least known primates, having never been studied in the wild; until now. Found only in the cloud forests of northern Peru, a group of scientists with Neotropical Primate Conservation and the National University of Mayor San Marcos have spent 12 months following a single group of this enigmatic monkey species in a small forest patch. The results of their research, published in mongabay.com’s open access journal, Tropical Conservation Science, shows that protecting forests, even small forest fragments, is vital to the species’ survival.

The researchers found that the species is capable of surviving in highly-fragmented forests, which is helpful to the monkeys living in agricultural and populated regions of Peru.  A studied family of six occupied a single forest fragment only three-and-a-half acres large.  There are currently eleven night monkey species known in South America, which make up the Aotus genus.  They are the world’s only truly nocturnal monkeys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Monkday :-)

Baby Monkey Rescued in Colombia

 

Abandoned by it’s mother, this squeetastic baby night monkey was thankfully rescued by biologists from a wildlife center in Colombia.  Now one of them has taken on the role of surrogate mother to the cute little primate, and so they must be together all the time… as in twenty-four hours a day.

 

Happy Monkday :-)