Chimpanzees Have Accents

Chimpanzees have regional accents. Send this to whoever insists that animals only make noise. Scientists have just reported that young chimpanzees living in different parts of Africa do not sound the same, and that the distance between them widens as the animals grow up.

Sokwe wana lafudhi za kikanda. Tuma hii kwa yeyote anayesisitiza kuwa wanyama hutoa sauti tu bila maana. Wanasayansi wamesema hivi karibuni kuwa sokwe wachanga wanaoishi sehemu tofauti za Afrika hawasikiki sawa, na kwamba tofauti kati yao huongezeka wanapokua.

The team went through more than eleven thousand recorded calls from infants and juveniles in two separate places, one a rescue centre in Zambia, the other a national park in Tanzania. They sorted the sounds into grunts, whimpers and laughter, and then measured them. The youngest animals sounded broadly similar wherever they lived. The older ones did not. Each group had drifted towards its own particular way of grunting.

Timu hiyo ilipitia zaidi ya sauti elfu kumi na moja zilizorekodiwa kutoka kwa watoto na sokwe vijana katika sehemu mbili tofauti, moja ikiwa kituo cha uokoaji nchini Zambia, nyingine ikiwa hifadhi ya taifa nchini Tanzania. Waligawanya sauti hizo katika makunyanzi, malalamiko na vicheko, kisha wakazipima. Sokwe wadogo zaidi walisikika kwa ufanano mkubwa popote walipoishi. Wale wakubwa hawakusikika hivyo. Kila kundi lilikuwa limesogea kuelekea njia yake maalum ya kutoa sauti.

That drift is the interesting part, because chimpanzee calls were long assumed to be fixed at birth, written into the animal rather than picked up from the neighbours. If a young chimp is instead absorbing the sound of the group around it, the way a child soaks up the vowels of a street, then accent may be a much older habit than anybody was willing to claim.

Mabadiliko hayo ndiyo sehemu ya kuvutia, kwa sababu sauti za sokwe kwa muda mrefu zilifikiriwa kuwa zimewekwa tangu kuzaliwa, zikiwa zimeandikwa ndani ya mnyama badala ya kujifunzwa kutoka kwa majirani. Kama sokwe mchanga anachukua badala yake sauti ya kundi linalomzunguka, kama vile mtoto anavyofyonza vokali za mtaani, basi lafudhi huenda ni tabia ya zamani zaidi kuliko yeyote alivyokuwa tayari kukubali.