Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Non-Human Primates Whisper to Each Other

A Cotton-top tamarin at Schwerin Zoo.
Credit: Harald Hoyer / Wikipedia.
An interesting article recently caught my attention.  It has now been officially documented that a species of non-human primate whispers to other members of its species when not wanting to be detected or overheard.  It has long been known that other species engage in a sort of whispering.  Even gophers do it.  However, this is the first recorded instance of deliberate whispering to both avoid detection and communicate threat in a non-human primate.

I have been told by bigfooters that they have heard what they thought were sasquatches whispering back and forth to each other.  No recording was made, but I have no reason to doubt the observation that the murmuring noises seemed to resemble whispering.  (Whether or not the bigfooters' interpretation was correct is another matter.)  This study verifying the behavior in non-human primates strengthens the researchers' claims that the bigfoots might have been whispering.

An exciting aspect to this discovery is whether or not this same behavior can be documented in great apes.  I predict it will be, but we all have to wait to find out.

Enjoy this most interesting article:

Research duo discover first instance of non-human primates whispering to each other
Sep 25, 2013 by Bob Yirka

( —Psychology researchers Rachel Morrison and Diana Reiss of The City University of New York have discovered the first instance of non-human primates whispering to one another. In their paper published in Zoo Biology, the two describe how they recorded vocalizations of captive tamarin monkeys and found that when threatened they sometimes revert to whispering to one another to avoid being overheard.

Whispering is a common strategy used by people to communicate with one or more people while simultaneously trying to avoid having others hear. Other animals have been found to lower the volume of their communications as well under certain circumstances, but never before has any primate other than humans been found to do so. In this new effort, the discovery was inadvertent.

Click this link to read the rest of the article.

1 comment:

  1. That Tamarin is adorable! I need to do an article on him for my site!
    If Gophers whisper too, then it would be believable that Apes do. Apes have learned sign language. I find it funny that Apes like the Gorilla are comedic. I saw a baby Gorilla rolling around and going nuts! LOL Was so cute! If you think about it, it makes sense that creatures made by the same person would have similar abilities, like whispering..just like how you can see similarities in things designed by the same sculptures and paintings.