Question: do you ever think we will be able to communicate with other animals such as baboons through speech? if yes how would we evolve to this?

Suzanne Harvey answered on 28 Jun 2013:

Great question! The speech part of this would always be difficult. Other primates understand a lot of language – there was a gorilla called Koko who learnt 2000 words of sign language, and a bonobo called Kanzi who could use sentences, saying things like “I want the ball that’s over there” by pointing at symbols representing the words. None have ever been able to form words though, even with years of training.

The work I’m doing is helping to understand what baboons are communicating to each other, so the other option is that we study this until we understand it fully, and then try to learn to make their sounds. This is theoretically possible! My field assistant calls the baboons in the forest and they reply, using their own sound that is used to stay in contact with their group.

In terms of what we would have to evolve to communicate easily with baboons – more variation in the pitch of sounds we can make would help. But even if we did communicate with them, they don’t chat like we do, we’d only be able to say simple things like “I have food”, as it’s all they talk about!