It’s been a good week for ... vowels
Forget the complexities of the great vowel shift of the Middle Ages, which dramatically changed the way we speak. New research suggests language began to evolve much earlier, about 25 million years ago. As a result, scientists have discovered that baboons make five distinct vowel sounds.
Analysis of their grunts, barks, wahoos, yaks and copulation calls found they were capable of human-sounding vocalisations.
Writing in the journal Plos One, Dr Louis-Jean Boë and colleagues said: “It has long been generally considered that human speech requires a low larynx, and that the high larynx of non-human primates should preclude their producing the vowel systems universally found in human language.”
Their research appears to confound this, and
Dr Boë, of Grenoble Alpes University, France, argued this had significant implications for the beginnings of the languages spoken by people today.
Previously it was thought that the spoken word originated some time within the last 70,000 to 100,000 years. However the researchers now think “spoken languages evolved from ancient articulatory skills already present in our last common ancestor with Cercopithecoidea, about 25 million years ago”.
This is ground-breaking work. But anyone who has worked behind a bar will have long suspected our simian linguistic links. Come last orders, there are often more than a few talking baboons.
It’s been a bad week for ... bowels
Have you got wind of #DoesItFart? It’s breaking news on science Twitter.
Academics have developed a spreadsheet to answer the all-important question: which animals pass wind and which don't?
The unusual project came about after UCL researcher Dani Rabaiotti posted a tweet asking whether snakes break wind, having been asked by a relative.
She directed the question at expert David Steen, assistant research professor at Auburn University, who confirmed that snakes do indeed.
A spreadsheet has now been created to answer the same question for more than 70 animals.
Orangutans do it “often and with no shame”; giraffes “at face height of the average man”; dogs “often take the blame from nearby hominid”.
Speaking about the project, Rabaiotti said: “There are people who say that it might be a bit silly, but it has got a few conversations going about different animals.”
Who said academics are full of hot air?
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