Macaques Like To Keep Their Conversations Short
Formosan macaques. Photo from Wikipedia.
Macaques, like humans, seem to prefer conversing in short calls (or using short words) rather than lengthy vocalizations. In humans, we use the words “the”, “a” and “of” often and they do not take long to say. The calls used often by macaques (greetings, grunts and coos) are also short.
The relationship between the length of a word and how often we use it can be explained by the “law of brevity”, which states that the words we use very often are very short and the words we use very rarely are long, said Dr. Stuart Semple from Roehampton University, UK.
The vocal repertoire of the Formosan macaques (Macaca cyclopsis) conforms to the law of brevity, indicating a commonality in the basic structure of communications in humans and non-human primates. The article by Semple et al. (2010), Efficiency of coding in macaque vocal communication is published on Biology Letters (free pdf)
Read more on BBC News: Monkeys keep chatter ‘short and sweet’.
Originally posted on The Prancing Papio.
[...] The Primatology blog has a look at a recent study on the length of Macaque ‘conversations’. [...]
News Round-Up: February 2009 3rd Edition « The Amazing World of Psychiatry: A Psychiatry Blog
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[...] There is an interesting write-up on a recent hypothesis by Professor Wheeler that cooking food may have led to an increase in brain size. The essence of the argument is that cooking reduces the amount of energy needed to digest food. In moving from Austrolopithecus to Homo Erectus and Homo Habilis there was a reduction in the size of the intestines and an increase in brain volume. The argument is that these anatomical changes were causally related to corresponding behavioural changes which enabled a significantly higher proportion of the body’s resources (i.e energy) to be allocated to the brain. Indeed this has been the subject of a Horizon programme which is available for a limited time here. There’s another interesting write-up, this time of a conference examining the ‘Origins of Human Uniqueness and Behavioural Modernity’. Discussion took place around a number of subjects including the possible role of gifts and adornements particularly in the role of signalling social status. The Primatology blog has a look at a recent study on the length of Macaque ‘conversations’. [...]
News Round-Up 2010 « The Amazing World of Psychiatry: A Psychiatry Blog
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