According to an article published on April 3 in the journal Science, some scientists found out that ape calls may have a trace of human language in them.

After observing the chimpanzees’ and other primates’ calls, the scientists found that these animals may have the ability to put together strings of sounds to create new meanings. This ability is essential in making up part of our human language. This shows the further development of the primates’ languages.

Many species use different sounds to communicate different ideas or things. However, most animals don’t string these sounds together. For example, monkeys use different warning calls for different occasions, like a leopard or an incoming flying eagle. However, recent research provides evidence for how advanced these animal languages are.

Simon Townsend, a comparative psychologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, recorded over 330 hours of chimpanzee calls throughout their everyday lives. Even though the sounds sounded chaotic together, Dr. Townsend and his team were able to identify 15 distinct pairs of calls.

For example, one pair of specific calls was “waa-bark” and “alarm-huu.” These calls each had different meanings: to summon other chimpanzees and to respond to a surprise, respectively. However, they were sometimes used together, one after the other. The scientists wondered whether this pair of calls meant something else to these animals.

Therefore, after intensive research, they found that the chimpanzees and apes used these calls after being frightened by a snake. The scientists then played this particular pair of calls over a loudspeaker and then got a longer response from the animals, compared to when they just played one call. The scientists were then also able to conclude that the paired calls meant something more complicated for these animals.

Moreover, Dr. Melissa Berthet, a postdoctoral researcher, recorded over 400 hours of ape calls in 2022 to capture more than one thousand calls. Out of these one thousand calls, 425 calls were paired. They also recorded the events that led the apes to make these sounds.

Finally, by using some AI systems to help them graph these calls visually, they found out that there were 4 pairs of calls that stood out significantly from their original single calls. This suggests that they contain some special meaning when combined together.

This new finding may then help linguists understand how our language has evolved over time and whether other animals have more sophisticated language than we have thought. “It’s imperfect,” linguist Dr. Steinert-Threlkeld says, “but it’s a good first step.”