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Young World
Bread or apple grunt
PHOTO:AFP
YES OR NO: A grunt will do.
Do animals have a language of their own? Yes, say scientists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland after studying chimpanzees at the Edinburgh Zoo. Their studies show that the chimpanzees use high and low pitched grunts to tell each other about food found in their surroundings. Earlier studies found that monkeys use sound to communicate with each other and that great apes use hand signals. But this is the first sign of vocal communication among the great apes. Researchers studying the chimps in Scotland found that they used grunts of different pitches when they found food like bread and apples. Researchers recorded the grunts and played it back to the chimps in the zoo to see if their hypothesis was right. Hearing the "bread" grunt, the chimps would look for bread where it was usually found. If it were the "apple" grunt, the chimps would look for it in its corner. Researchers are planning more experiments to learn more.
R. KRITHIKA
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