Chimpanzees Spoke Human Words in Stunning Footage Recovered by Scientists

Photo byScreenshot/Youtube

In a surprising turn of events, decades-old footage has reignited the debate about the origins of speech, revealing that our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, may possess the neural foundation necessary for vocalizing human words.

Two separate videos, one from a 1960s newsreel and another from a home recording, capture chimpanzees in captivity uttering the word "mama," challenging long-held beliefs about the uniqueness of human speech.

Challenging Long-Held Assumptions About Human Speech

For years, scientists believed that the ability to produce meaningful sounds was exclusive to humans, largely due to differences in brain structure between us and other primates.

But Dr. Axel Ekström, a phonetician and cognitive scientist from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, along with his team, suggests this assumption might be fundamentally flawed.

Their study, recently published in Scientific Reports, analyzed the two videos of chimpanzees on different continents, and found that the supposed gap in vocal ability between humans and chimpanzees may not exist after all.

Ekström and his colleagues highlight how the chimpanzees appear to have been taught the word "mama" by their English-speaking caregivers. The significance of this lies in the fact that "mama" is believed to be one of the first words to emerge in human speech, likely because of the simplicity of the "m-vowel-m" sound pattern, which is common across many human languages.

Ekström et al. (2024).Photo byScientific Reports.

Evidence of Vocal Production Learning in Chimpanzees

This new evidence aligns with previous findings by Ekström, who analyzed a sound recording of a third chimpanzee from a 1960s television show that vocalized the words "papa" and "cup."

Collectively, these observations suggest that chimpanzee brains are capable of intentionally imitating at least some of the sounds they hear, a trait known as vocal production learning.

This ability indicates that the neurological system responsible for audio-vocal communication, which humans share with songbirds, might be much older than previously thought, dating back millions of years to a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.

Specifically, Ekström et al. wrote in their paper:

The lexical form “mama”, when spoken by chimpanzees, exhibits phonetic features typical of the same utterance when produced by human speakers, and are perceived as contextually appropriate syllables by human listeners.

These results corroborate a growing body of evidence that great apes are vocal production learners, dispelling decades-old misconceptions about the species’ voice and articulatory control, and by extension, their value as comparative models for speech and language evolution.

One of the featured videos showcases Johnny, a chimpanzee from the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Florida, who reportedly called everyone "Mama."

According to the video’s owner, Johnny used the word strategically, knowing that it would help him get what he wanted, as long as it was part of his diet. This anecdote further underscores the chimpanzees’ potential for understanding and utilizing human-like vocalizations in meaningful ways.

Conclusion

"Great apes can produce human words," Ekström and his colleagues conclude, pointing to the evidence that the failure to demonstrate this ability in the past was due to the limitations of the researchers, not the animals themselves.

This revelation not only challenges our understanding of what separates us from other species but also opens the door to a deeper appreciation of the shared cognitive heritage that links humans with our closest evolutionary cousins.