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If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

english.elpais.com

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Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#9
A very interesting read, which describes how for ~50 years the community was lead astray by a seemingly simple oversight: studying dead animals instead of living ones!

>Charles Darwin theorized that monkeys had the vocal anatomy needed for speech, but lacked the necessary neural mechanisms.

>This was the most popular hypothesis until 1969 [when] Lieberman studied the vocal anatomy of a monkey corpse and concluded that other primates could not produce as many vowels as humans because of the position of their larynxes [which] cemented the idea that a descended larynx is a prerequisite for speech.

>Towards the end of the 20th century, evolutionary biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch realized a crucial fact – all the existing evidence was based on the anatomy of dead primates. Surprised that this had not been done before, Fitch used x-ray imaging to study the vocal tracts of live animals while they were voicing sounds. He was amazed to observe that their larynxes at rest remained high and then descended during vocalization to a position very similar to the human larynx.

>All these studies indicate that apes have all the anatomical characteristics necessary for speech. The reason they don’t is purely neural. Humans have much better control of the larynx, not because of its position, but because of the neural connections that connect it to the brain. Parrots don’t even have a larynx, but they have wonderful control of their speech organ, which enables them to articulate intelligible words and phrases.

Fascinating

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