Like speech, the species-specific vocalizations or calls of non-human primates mediate social interactions, convey important emotional information, and in some cases refer to objects and events in the caller's environment. These functional similarities suggest that the selective pressures which shaped primate vocal communication are similar to those that influenced the evolution of human speech. As such, investigating the perception and production of vocalizations in extant non-human primates provides one avenue for understanding the neural mechanisms of speech and for illuminating the...
Like speech, the species-specific vocalizations or calls of non-human primates mediate social interactions, convey important emotional information, an...
Why do people find monkeys and apes so compelling to watch? One clear answer is that they seem so similar to us--a window into our own minds and how we have evolved over millennia. As Charles Darwin wrote in his Notebook, "He who understands baboon would do more toward metaphysics than Locke." Darwin recognized that behavior and cognition, and the neural architecture that support them, evolved to solve specific social and ecological problems. Defining these problems for neurobiological study, and conveying neurobiological results to ethologists and psychologists, is fundamental to an...
Why do people find monkeys and apes so compelling to watch? One clear answer is that they seem so similar to us--a window into our own minds and how w...
