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Asked by a1patch1of1turnips to Claire on 19 Jun 2013.
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Claire El Mouden answered on 19 Jun 2013:
There are some studies in the rainforests in South America which show that monkeys that live there can understand the calls of different monkeys and birds. I think they showed one species of monkey could understand 12 other species’ calls…so it’s not really interlinking in the sense of properly sharing the same calls, but they certainty can understand each other’s alarm calls (e.g. the difference between ‘snake’ and ‘hawk’ calls).
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Comments
lg333 commented on :
wow a bit like french and spanish
Suzanne commented on :
This is something that we study a lot in our research team! One good example is Campbell’s monkeys and Diana monkeys – like Claire mentioned, they have calls that are made when a hawk is nearby, and different calls that are made when a leopard is nearby. There is quite a fun experiment to test this idea – if we put models of hawks made from chicken feathers and toy leopards in the forest, it tricks them into making the hawk and leopard calls! Then we record the sounds they make, and play them back at another time. We know that Campbell’s monkeys and Diana monkeys understand each other’s calls because if you play a hawk call, they all run down the trees to avoid it, and if you play a leopard call they all run up, so everyone understands what it means!