Bonobos make themselves appear 'smaller' than they actually are

Date: October 23, 2018

Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

We can easily see whether someone is large or small, but we can also hear it in the pitch of their voice. For a long time, research on the accoustic communication in humans and animals has accepted the paradigm predicting a causal relationship between body size and voice pitch. Meanwhile, evidence from a large number of animal species has revealed that this relation does not always apply. Various animal species, including chimpanzees, have mechanisms that enable them to produce sounds that are lower than expected for their body size making them sound larger than they actually are -- a common phenomenon in animal communication.

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