By Virginia Morell May.
25, 2017 , 12:00 PM
Baby marmosets learn to make
their calls by trying to repeat their parents’ vocalizations, scientists report
today in Current Biology. Humans were thought to be the only primate with vocal
learning—the ability to hear a sound and repeat it, considered essential for
speech. When our infants babble, they make apparently random sounds, which
adults respond to with words or other sounds; the more this happens, the faster
the baby learns to talk.
To find out
whether marmosets (Callithrix
jacchus, pictured) do something similar, scientists played recordings of
parental calls during a daily 30-minute session to three sets of newborn
marmoset twins until they were 2 months old (roughly equivalent to a 2-year-old
human). Baby marmosets make noisy guttural cries; adults respond with soft
“phee” contact calls (listen to their calls below).
The
baby that consistently heard its parents respond to its cries learned to make
the adult “phee” sound much faster than did its twin, the team found.
It’s not yet known if this ability is limited to the marmosets; if so, the
difference may be due to the highly social lives of these animals, where, like
us, multiple relatives help care for babies.
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