As anyone who has seen Disney’s The Jungle Book will be aware that Louie, the orangutan leader and king of the swingers, can hold a serious tune.
And while real orangutans don’t quite possess the pipes to rival Louie, they do have an impressive vocal talent: they can make two separate sounds at the same time, much like a human beatboxer.
Researchers from the University of Warwick made the discovery after observing two populations of vocalising orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra for a total of 3,800 hours.
They found that large male orangutans in Borneo make sounds known as ‘chomps’ and ‘grumbles’ when they get into disputes. Meanwhile, females in Sumatra let out sounds known as ‘kiss squeaks’ and ‘rolling calls’ to alert others of potential predators.
In both cases the apes were capable of making both sounds at the same time, a technique used by human beatboxers to mimic electronic drum machines and other instruments.
“Humans use the lips, tongue, and jaw to make the unvoiced sounds of consonants, while activating the vocal folds in the larynx with exhaled air to make the voiced, open sounds of vowels,” said Dr Adriano Lameira, associate professor of psychology at the University of Warwick.
“Orangutans are also capable of producing both types of sounds – and both at once.
“The fact that two separate populations of orangutans were observed making two calls simultaneously is proof that this is a biological phenomenon.”
As orangutans and humans are both members of the great ape family, the team say that with further study the findings could provide clues about the evolution of human speech.
“Now that we know this vocal ability is part of the great ape repertoire, we can’t ignore the evolutionary links,” said Lameria.
“It could be possible that early human language resembled something that sounded more like beatboxing, before evolution organised language into the consonant–vowel structure that we know today.”
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