A prank by researchers at the University of Zürich may have revealed a primitive language within chimpanzees in a new study for what researchers describe as "syntactic-like structuring in chimpanzee communication."
The study, which was published earlier this month in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, states that "chimpanzees produce 'alarm-huus' when surprised and 'waa-barks' when potentially recruiting conspecifics during aggression or hunting," or in other words, signaling other chimpanzees to help. Chimpanzees reportedly combined both of these sounds specifically when they found themselves in an encounter with a snake that was on the loose, the study said.
It should be noted that the snake model used for the study was manufactured from the skin of a dead python, which was donated by the Uganda Wildlife Education Center.
The two aforementioned sounds reportedly represent a "compositional syntactic-like structure," the study states. As for the call combination's meaning, researchers proposed that it comes from the meaning of its parts.
The researchers confirmed the combinations of sounds when more chimpanzees join the one who initiated the call after hearing the sound. The call combination was then analyzed for its meaning by researchers by using playbacks of other call combinations that were artificially constructed as well as independent calls.
How did the chimpanzees respond?
According to the study, chimpanzees responded with longer looks to call combinations in comparison to one of the two independent calls.
This type of communication is critical to the chimpanzees as a violent encounter with a python could be fatal for them.
Researchers have ultimately traced the compositional structures of the primitive language derived from the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees in regards to the latter's ability for cognitive building blocks facilitating syntax.