Biohistory Journal, Summer, 2006

Research: Index > Searching for the origin of words from the song of the hylobatidae

Searching for the origin of words from the song of the hylobatidae

Nobuo Masataka Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University

The duet of the agile gibbon is thought to inform others of the territorial demarcation and deepen ties between mates. These creatures are now classified in about 10 species, and the duets are species specific. The Hoolock gibbon has an ancient lineage, and the males and females sing the same song together from beginning to end with the same vocalization. The agile gibbon, which developed later, divides the song into parts, however, with males and females singing their own repertory separately. Further, Kloss’s gibbon will sing its own part from memory even if it does not have a partner. It can apparently sing solo when it wants to sing. If this solo is sung in response to the surrounding environment, we may consider that this does not differ greatly from the vocabulary we use every day. It is thought to be an activity just before the birth of language, and is remarkably similar to the way babies learn words: by extracting the vocabulary they like and saying the words. The song of the hylobatidae provides us a glimpse of human communication in prehistoric times.

A parent and child Lar gibbon

An enlargement

Nobuo Masataka Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University Born in Osaka in 1954, Masataka completed his research at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Human Science and received a doctor’s degree. After serving as a visiting fellow at the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, he was named professor at the Primate Research Institute of the Kyoto University. He is also a research professor at the NTT Communication Science Laboratories.

		The large heads are the difference

Rsearch

Please close a window with the button of a browser who are turning off Javascript.