Follow the Evolutionary Roots of Interspecies Language

ANIMAL LANGUAGE
Shows The Evolution of Language in Humans

STARTING WITH FISH
AND WORKING IT'S WAY THROUGH TIME UNTIL HUMANS USE IT.

#Interspecies #Animal Language #Evolution #why children sing

Roots • Biophony • Intelligence • Ears

The Language of Fish, Whales Have Dialects Just Like Humans, Dolphins, Elephants, Wolves, Mice, Birds, Bees, Apes, Bonobo, Gorilla, Monkey and Chimp and Humans. The collective "hooting" patterns that resemble "duetting" and "chorusing" on the vocal behaviors of their shared primate ancestors of humans, and what those might say about the evolution of music, language, and religion. Some species like bees use dance, while other species scream, bark, roar, click, whistle, sing, and gesture.

Baboon Study Reveals Early Evolution of Language https://archive.is/h15lW
Baboons use over 2000 distinct sounds. Scientists have discovered that baboons can produce five distinct vowel sounds, which are strikingly similar to our own human vowel sounds. The scientists recorded over 2,000 distinct calls, grunts and barks and discovered that the sounds that baboons make are very similar to our human vowel sounds. This discovery suggests that language skills actually evolved tens of millions of years earlier than previously thought. It is now thought that our pre-human ancestors could have been using meaningful language over 25 million years ago.
Tongue anatomy is the same as humans Dr Louis-Jean Boë said: “Examining the vocalisations through acoustic analyses, tongue anatomy and modelling of acoustic potential, we found that baboons produce sounds sharing the f1/f2 formant [sound frequencies] structure of the human vowels.” This suggests that our pre-human ancestors would probably have developed the physical capacity for language before they split off from the ancestors of baboons 25 million years ago.

Humans evolved to do all of this.

Evolutionary Science Show the Roots of Language

Researchers have found that monkeys combine calls to make them meaningful in the same way that humans do.
The researchers recorded the alarm calls of putty-nosed monkeys in Nigeria and noticed them combining noises to apparently convey different meanings. 2008 Large Repertoire - The latest research provides evidence that the various calls may contain at least three types of information - the event witnessed, the caller's identity, and whether he intends to travel, all of which were recognised by other monkeys.

• Cotton-top tamarin Monkeys 'grasp basic grammar' 2004
• Cotton-top tamarins Monkeys can distinguish different sound-patterns in time which shows they recognise 'bad grammar'. 2009
• From The Mouths Of Apes, Babble Hints At Origins of Human Speech. An orangutan named Tilda is providing scientists with fresh evidence that even early human ancestors had the ability to make speechlike vocalizations.

GESTURE

Explore the underwater origins of vocal communication, as well as whether fish were the first animals to evolve some common non-vocal gestures

Humans still Gesture all the time , the nongramatical expressive movements we all make [shrugging shoulders, waving good-bye, brandishing a fist. Hands are the beginnings of language.

2012 Fascinating Facial Signals / Gestures

• Out of the Mouths of Primates, Facial Mechanics of Human Speech May Have Evolved. "This research gives us insight into methods of exploring the neural basis of not only facial expression production but also its evolution and relationship to speech". X-ray movies to film adult rhesus macaques as they smacked their lips or as they chewed food. The researchers observed that during lip smacking, internal structures such as the tongue and hyoid, which houses the larynx, move in pace with the lips with a rhythm of 5 hertz -- again, just as in human speech. Also similar to humans, chewing produced a slow, tightly coordinated movement of these components in macaques, while lip smacking resulted in faster, loosely coordinated movement. Lip smacking undergoes the same developmental trajectory from infancy to adulthood in rhesus macaques that speech-related mouth movement does in humans. Infant macaques smacked their lips slowly and with an inconsistent rhythm, similar to the documented pace of babbling in human infants. By adulthood, however, lip smacking has a distinct rhythm and a faster pace averaging 5 hertz, or cycles per second -- the same as adult humans producing speech.
  
  
• Monkey Lip Smacks Provide New Insights Into the Evolution of Human Speech. New research published in Current Biology by W. Tecumseh Fitch, Head of the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, supports the idea that human speech evolved less from vocalizations than from communicative facial gestures. Although superficially lip-smacking appears to involve simply rapid opening and closing of the lips, the x-ray movies show that lip-smacking is actually a complex behaviour, requiring rapid, coordinated movements of the lips, jaw, tongue and the hyoid bone (which provides the supporting skeleton for the larynx and tongue). Furthermore these movements occur at a rate of about 5 cycles per second, the same as speech, and are much faster than chewing movements (about 2.5 cycles per second). Thus, although lip smacking superficially resembles "fake chewing," it is in fact very different, and more like speech.
  
  
• Barking Dogs Depending on the context, a dog's barks can vary in timing, pitch, and amplitude. How well do people understand what dogs are saying? Researchers played a collection of barks to a group of people. Regardless of whether they owned a dog or not, most people could tell from a bark whether a dog was alone or being approached by a stranger, playing or being aggressive.

CLICK LANGUAGES

Miriam Makeba Pata Pata

CLICKS: Ancient Roots for an African Language?
'First language may have used clicks' October 2001
http://www.ananova.com/
Two scientists say a genetic study suggests the world's first language may have used clicks. Still found in parts of Africa, Click Languages rely on distinctive clicking sounds made by the tongue to form words. The US researchers say their study shows existing click speakers are genetically diverse, meaning their languages may be older than others. Click languages are still found in the Hadza tribe of Tanzania and the San groups of Botswana and Namibia.

Khoisan click language

Mbuti Pygmies Ituri Rainforest (1956 &1957) sound track

BIRDS - Human
WHISTLING LANGUAGES

Hear HUMAN Mexican Whistler by African Roger Whitaker

Geert Chatrou

Hear the Human SILBO Whistle Language recorded in 2003

Spoken on La Gomera, one of Spain's Canary Islands off West Africa. The word comes from Spanish verb silbar, meaning to whistle -- features four "vowels" and four "consonants" that can be strung together to form more than 4,000 words. Phonological and phonetic aspects of whistled languages

It sounds just like bird conversation.
Translation:
"Hey, Servando!"
"What?"
"Look, go tell Julio to bring the castanets."
"OK. Hey, Julio!"
"What?"
"Lili says you should go get the kids and have them bring the castanets for the party."
"OK, OK, OK." Human Whistling Languages

SAN SEBASTIAN, Canary Islands - Juan Cabello takes pride in not using a cell phone or the Internet to communicate. Instead, he puckers up and whistles. Cabello is a "silbador," until recently a dying breed on tiny, mountainous La Gomera, one of Spain's Canary Islands off West Africa. Like his father and grandfather before him, Cabello, 50, knows "Silbo Gomero," a language that's whistled, not spoken, and can be heard more than two miles away. This chirpy brand of chatter is thought to have come over with early African settlers 2,500 years ago. Now, educators are working hard to save it from extinction by making schoolchildren study it up to age 14.
Silbo — the word comes from Spanish verb silbar, meaning to whistle — features four "vowels" and four "consonants" that can be strung together to form more than 4,000 words. It sounds just like bird conversation and Cabello says it has plenty of uses. "I use it for everything: to call to my wife, to tell my kids something, to find a friend if we get lost in a crowd," Cabello said. In fact, he makes a living off Silbo, performing daily exhibitions at a restaurant on this island of 147 square miles and 19,000 people.
Silbo was once used throughout the hilly terrain of La Gomera as an ingenious way of communicating over long distances. A strong whistle saved peasants from trekking over hill and dale to send messages or news to neighbors. Then came the phone, and it's hard to know how many people use Silbo these days. "A lot of people think they do, but there is a very small group who can truly communicate through Silbo and understand Silbo," said Manuel Carreiras, a psychology professor from the island of Tenerife. He specializes in how the brain processes language and has studied Silbo.
Since 1999, Silbo has been a required language in La Gomera's elementary schools. Some 3,000 students are studying it 25 minutes a week — enough to teach the basics, said Eugenio Darias, a Silbo teacher and director of the island's Silbo program. "There are few really good silbadores so far, but lots of students are learning to use it and understand it," he said. "We've been very pleased." But almost as important as speaking — sorry, whistling — Silbo is studying where it came from, and little is known. "Silbo is the most important pre-Hispanic cultural heritage we have," said Moises Plasencia, the director of the Canary government's historical heritage department. It might seem appropriate for a language that sounds like birdsong to exist in the Canary Islands, but scholarly theories as to how the archipelago got its name make no mention of whistling.
Little is known about Silbo's origins, but an important step toward recovering the language was the First International Congress of Whistled Languages, held in April in La Gomera. The congress, which will be repeated in 2005, brought together experts on various whistled languages. Silbo-like whistling has been found in pockets of Greece, Turkey, China and Mexico, but none is as developed as Silbo Gomero, Plasencia said. One study is looking for vestiges of Silbo in Venezuela, Cuba and Texas, all places to which Gomerans have historically emigrated during hard economic times. Now, Plasencia is heading an effort to have UNESCO (news - web sites) declare it an "intangible cultural heritage" and support efforts to save it. "Silbo is so unique and has many values: historical, linguistic, anthropological and aesthetic. It fits perfectly with UNESCO's requirements," he said. Besides, says Cabello, it's good for just about anything except for romance: "Everyone on the island would hear what you're saying!"

WHY DO
CHILDREN SING?

Why do Children Sing?
Many animals, he argues, have evolved to squeeze their vocalizations into available niches of the soundscape in order to be heard by others of their kind. Evolution isnt just about the competition for space or food but also for bandwidth. If a species cannot find a sonic niche of its own, it will not survive.

SUNG SPEECH

Hear Children Singing - The voices of children along with nearby birds.

Listen to Piraha sung speech
two boys singing about a day's events

Language indicates Culture

This also involves Intelligence, Emotion and Compassion

Psychic Hired to Speak to Sea Lion in La Jolla CA
In one of the most California things to ever happen, La Jolla Cove invited a self-described "animal psychic" to get the sea lions' perspective on a locally controversial issue regarding the large number of sea lions lounging and living on the beach.

Proof of Sperm Whale Culture

It seems that over the last 30 years, the Galápagos sperm whales have gone through a cultural turnover, when individuals that speak one dialect totally replace those that speak another. Until now, such replacements were unknown outside of humans. The Regular and Plus-One whales haven't vanished entirely. They can still be heard off northern Chile and the Gulf of California.

Sperm whales live in different clans that speak different dialects — a phenomenon that is also seen in humpback whales and orcas. Different clans can be identified by their unique calls to each other. The calls of humpback whales do evolve. But sperm whale calls tend to stay stable for at least 10 years.
From 1985 to 2000, Hal Whitehead led yearly expeditions to the Galapagos Islands to listen to the calls of sperm whales. He stopped going in 2000 because the whales had completely disappeared. In 2011, Hal got a call from a colleague in the Galapagos: The whales were back. He returned with his team in 2013. But when Hal and his team arrived, they didn't find the same clans of sperm whales that had been in the region in the '80s and '90s. How did they know? The new whales spoke different dialects.

DOLPHINS

Dolphins Name Themselves With Whistles, Study Says James Owen May 8, 2006
Dolphins give themselves "names"distinctive whistles that they use to identify each other, new research shows. Scientists say it's the first time wild animals have been shown to call out their own names. What's more, the marine mammals can recognize individual names even when the sound is produced by an unfamiliar voice.

Dolphin species attempt 'common language' When two dolphin species come together, they attempt to find a common language, preliminary research suggests.

Can different species 'talk'?
The ability of some animals to communicate is well known.
A dolphin appeared to "talk" to two stranded whales before leading them to safety. How common is inter-species communication? Before the bottlenose dolphin turned up, the beached pygmy sperm whales were in clear distress. But when Moko arrived at Mahia beach on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island, their mood changed and they followed him to safety. Dolphins use three forms of signalling to other dolphins - whistles (the term was coined in a paper published in 1949 in the journal Science) clicking and postures.

Dolphins 'Talk' Like Humans
Dolphins "talk" to each other, using the same process to make their high-pitched sounds as humans, according to a new analysis of results from a 1970s experiment. The findings mean dolphins don't actually whistle as has been long thought, but instead rely on vibrations of tissues in their nasal cavities that are analogous to our vocal cords. Scientists are only now figuring this out, "because it certainly sounds like a whistle . Rather than vocal cords, the dolphins likely use tissue vibrations in their nasal cavities to produce their "whistles," which aren't true whistles after all. The researchers suggest structures in the nasal cavity, called phonic lips, are responsible for the sound. It does not mean that they talk like humans, only that they communicate with sound made in the same way. "Cetean ancestors lived on land some 40 million years ago and made sounds with vocal folds in their larynx," Madsen said, referring to the group of mammals to which dolphins belong. "They lost that during the adaptations to a fully aquatic lifestyle, but evolved sound production in the nose that functions like that of vocal folds." This vocal ability also likely gives dolphins a broader range of sounds.

WHALE LANGUAGE - WHALES SING

Whales can love!
Researchers in New York have found that various types of whales possess the same emotion-producing brain cells as humans.

Mice Sing Love Songs

WHALE LANGUAGE - Warbling Whales Speak A Language All Their Own Hear: WHALE Whistle

Humpback Whale Chorus, recorded in a long, narrow channel that amplified and attenuated their calls in a most wonderful way

Further Reading and Resources

Language indicates Culture: This also involves Intelligence, Emotion and Compassion

• Origin and Evolution of Language, Words and Music ~ Karen Ellis
• LANGUAGE IS MUSIC TO THE BRAIN
• How the SONGS OF NATIONS evolved.
• Humans in cultures that speak TONAL LANGUAGES have PERFECT PITCH.HUMANS ARE BORN WITH PERFECT PITCH - USE IT OR LOSE IT
• Interdisciplinary connections between Language, Music, Evolution, & Reading
• Rhythmic patterns Research underlie the human language Origin of Human
• Interdisciplinary Social Rhythm Researchers. How music strikes a chord with language. ORIGIN OF THE LULLABYE It is a tool. The tool is used to calm and quiet baby especially useful when you don't want your tribe, family, self to be found and eaten by the monsters that roam the night.
  
• Vocal Behavior: An Anatomical consideration
• The Evolution of Music in Comparative Perspective

Niches of the Soundscape

Naturalist and sound recordist Dr. Bernie Krause first surfaced during the early '60s as Pete Seeger's replacement in the legendary folk group the Weavers; by the middle of the decade he was working as a staff producer at Elektra Records, in 1968 teaming with jazz musician Paul Beaver to record the LP The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music, a groundbreaking excursion into experimental sounds and textures which made innovative use of early synthesizers.

BIOPHONY and SOUNDSCAPE
Biophony, Bernie Krause has theorized, is unique to each place; nowhere in nature sounds exactly like anywhere else. This idea has led him toward a controversial way of thinking that would broaden the scope of todays evolutionary biology. Many animals, he argues, have evolved to squeeze their vocalizations into available niches of the soundscape in order to be heard by others of their kind. Evolution isn't just about the competition for space or food but also for bandwidth.

Wolves - Howling and other vocalizations
Wolf howls, which can last from 0.5-11 seconds, typically have a soundscape frequency of 150-780 Hz. A wolf's howl may be heard from up to 16 kilometers (10 mi) away, depending on weather conditions. Howling helps pack members keep in touch, allowing them to communicate effectively in thickly forested areas or over great distances. Howling also helps to call pack members to a specific location. Howling can also serve as a declaration of territory, as shown in a dominant wolf's tendency to respond to a human imitation of a "rival" wolf in an area the wolf considers its own. This behavior is stimulated when a pack has something to protect, such as a fresh kill. As a rule of thumb, large packs will more readily draw attention to themselves than will smaller packs. Adjacent packs may respond to each others' howls, which can mean trouble for the smaller of the two. Wolves therefore tend to howl with great care.
Wolves will also howl for communal reasons. Some scientists speculate that such group sessions strengthen the wolves' social bonds and camaraderie—similar to community singing among humans. During such choral sessions, wolves will howl at different tones and varying pitches, making it difficult to estimate the number of wolves involved. This confusion of numbers makes a listening rival pack wary of what action to take. For example, confrontation could be disastrous if the rival pack gravely underestimates the howling pack's numbers. Observations of wolf packs suggest that howling occurs most often during the twilight hours, preceding the adults' departure to the hunt and following their return. Studies also show that wolves howl more frequently during the breeding season and subsequent rearing process. The pups themselves begin howling soon after emerging from their dens and can be provoked into howling sessions easily over the following two months. Such indiscriminate howling usually is intended for communication, and does not harm the wolf so early in its life. Howling becomes less indiscriminate as wolves learn to distinguish howling pack members from rival wolves.

Songbirds 'sing from hymn sheet'

Birds sing in their sleep

Not Neato - Noise Contributes to Baby Bird Deaths

Snowball (TM) is a Medium Sulphur Crested Eleanora Cockatoo that dances to the Back Street Boys and other songs that he rates as having a "very good beat." He came to Bird Lovers Only Rescue Service, Inc. (a 501c3 not for profit bird rescue and sanctuary) in August 2007 and continues to make us laugh with his fancy footwork. We are currently raising funds to build a bird habitat for Snowball and other birds like him. Please visit us at http://www.birdloversonly.org to receive Snowball DVDs,shirts, and other items in return for your donations. Thank you so very much for your generous support of our cause!
Please also visit our blog http://www.birdloversonly.blogspot.com for up to date research information on Snowball's cognitive music studies.

Frostie The Cockatoo Dancing To Shake Your Tail Feather! Bird Loves Ray Charles!