Where people have been trturing monkeys for the sake of views. The report states that the animal abuse trend seems toĮmerging from Asia and is more popular in Cambodia.Īnimal rights organisation PETA told The Sun Online: More recently, a report by The Sunrevealed a new dark world Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.Every now and then we hear of gut-wrenching cases of animalĪbuse reported from across the world and many times the perpetrators get away "There are certain sounds that infants enjoy hearing, so adults will try to make those sounds that the baby likes to hear." "Both monkey and human infants have perceptual abilities that are different than those of adults," he said. (END OPTIONAL TRIM) Researchers are interested in vocalizations made by non-human primates and how they are used for communication, Maestripieri said. "Monkeys get excited about a lot of things, like finding their favorite food, but they don't wag tails unless it is associated with seeing a baby." "Tail wagging is very specific to babies," he said. Scratching themselves on the arms, legs, bellies and heads is a common monkey behavior to show excitement, said Maestripieri, but it is rare to see a monkey wag its tail. (EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM) "They watch the infants so intently, scratching themselves as a show of their excitement, and often wagging their tails while emitting a long string of these vocalizations," said Whitham. It is strictly a vocalization used by females who seem to have a deep fascination for a baby belonging to another monkey, taking great pleasure when they can get the baby's attention. Male rhesus monkeys have never been observed using it, but they also take virtually no part in rearing the young.Īnd monkey baby talk is associated only with monkey infants, while Whitham points out humans use it with pets and lovers as well.Īlso unlike humans, monkey mothers never engage in baby talk with their own babies. For one, only adult female monkeys use the girney vocalization. The use of baby talk by the monkeys differs dramatically from human baby talk in some respects. The girney sound "may be adaptively designed to attract young infants and engage their attention, similar to how the acoustic structure of human motherese, or baby talk, allows adults to visually or socially engage with infants," Maestripieri said. Maestripieri and Whitham published a paper on their findings today in the research journal Ethology, based on observations made with a third co-author, Melissa Gerald of the University of Puerto Rico, in 20 of free-ranging families of rhesus macaques living on the island. The monkeys often wag their tails in the presence of a monkey infant, like a human using a rattle to entertain the little one. The intent seemed simply to get the infant to look over and make eye contact with the caller, she said, then to amuse the infant, much as a human might try to get a baby to smile.Ī rhesus macaque wanting to charm a tot has an advantage over a human: Besides babbling in baby tongues, it can wag its tail. "They also mix in grunt vocalizations, but the girney may be more similar to baby talk, an acoustic structure intentionally designed to attract attention of the infant." "Actually, they are looking at the baby when they are producing these vocalizations, so we think they are intended for the baby, not the mother," said Whitham, a recent Ph.D. Previous studies had concluded that when a rhesus monkey approached a mother and its baby, it directed the girney vocalization at the mother to signal the caller's intentions were benign and harmless - it was not threatening mother or child.īut after watching 19 adult females in a family of 65 rhesus monkeys on the Puerto Rican island of Cayo Santiago daily for months at a time, co-author Jessica Whitham said she saw something quite different was happening. I can't replicate it, but it is used almost exclusively when adult monkeys see babies." "It's a very strange sound," he said, "made with their mouths almost closed, sort of nasal and relatively soft. In monkeys the vocalizations are called "girneys," and they are a sound completely different from any other the animal makes, said Maestripieri. Seeing the adult monkeys use a form of baby talk suggests the behavior in humans may be biological in origin, said Dario Maestripieri, associate professor of comparative human development at the University of Chicago. CHICAGO - Adult rhesus macaques make high-pitched, sing-songy vocalizations when they encounter infant monkeys - just the kind of sounds humans seem to naturally fall into using around infants, scientists reported this week.
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