In 1962, many American moviegoers were treated to an unusual display during screenings of the popular Universal Newsreels that aired before feature presentations. That year, a segment entitled “Now Hear This! Italians Unveil Talking Chimp” was shown, introducing audiences to Renata, a chimpanzee who had reportedly been trained to say “mama” by her handler.
“As explained by her foster mother, this is one of the most extraordinary chimps in the world,” announcer Ed Herlihy’s famous voice could be heard saying in the decades-old footage. “You don’t have to know Italian to understand Renata’s accent when she gets her cue.”
Then, as Renata’s handler taps her on the chin, the chimpanzee is shown saying the word “mama” several times.
The footage, likely viewed as little more than a novelty at the time, represented something potentially extraordinary: evidence of a non-human primate displaying the ability to speak, albeit crudely. Despite Renata’s unique talent, the footage was largely forgotten, and prevailing wisdom continued to insist that humans were the only primates with the required neural circuitry capable of speech.
However, Renata was not the only known example of a chimpanzee who displayed a limited ability to learn and speak human words. Decades later, in a video uploaded to YouTube on August 17, 2007, a chimpanzee named Johnny was also shown saying “mama,” seemingly in response to requests from his owner, after which he was awarded a treat.
Now, an international team of researchers that reviewed the footage of Renata and Johnny have concluded that in at least three known instances, chimpanzees were indeed able to learn human words and exhibit limited speech capabilities.
“We recovered original footage of two enculturated chimpanzees uttering the word ‘mama’ and subjected recordings to phonetic analysis,” write the authors of a new study published in Nature: Scientific Reports by Axel G. Ekström and colleagues. “Our analyses demonstrate that chimpanzees are capable of syllabic production, achieving consonant-to-vowel phonetic contrasts via the simultaneous recruitment and coupling of voice, jaw and lips.”
In their paper, the researchers state that they conducted an online experiment in which participants were provided recordings of the utterances to listen to but were not told they were listening to chimpanzees. The participants “reliably perceived chimpanzee utterances as syllabic utterances, primarily as ‘ma-ma,’” the researchers write.
The researchers conclude that the vocal abilities great apes possess have largely been underestimated, writing that “Chimpanzees possess the neural building blocks necessary for speech.”
Great apes do not appear to display any signs of language use in nature, and it is noteworthy that Renata and Johnny appear to have learned their unique talents through human coaching. However, the findings are significant since they show that at least one nonhuman great ape species does possess the required neural components to facilitate speech, whether or not they utilize such faculties on their own in the wild.
Although speech is not an ability chimpanzees normally rely on, the same cannot be said of their overall ability to communicate. Recent studies have shown that chimpanzees frequently use gestures while communicating in a way similar to that of humans. In at least a few instances, chimpanzees have also shown a remarkable ability to understand human language. One notable example involves Kanzi, a bonobo who reportedly understands close to 3000 human words and has exhibited the ability to answer questions using a special keyboard that reproduces human words.
In their new paper, Ekström and colleagues note that past studies involving chimps and their ability to exhibit rudimentary speech had been largely dismissed due to lack of rigorous analysis. However, the new findings appear to support these previously unconfirmed observations, which have often cited words like “mama” as being among the ones most commonly learned by chimps.
Indeed, there could be more to the prevalence of this particular word in past studies involving chimpanzee speech. As the study’s authors note, “mama” is often among the first words human infants learn and may, in fact, have deeper roots as one of the earliest spoken language words ever created by humans.
“Accordingly, it has been argued that ‘mama’ may have been among the first words to appear in human speech,” the authors of the new study write.
“Our data complements this picture: chimpanzees can produce the putative ‘first words’ of spoken languages.”
The team’s new study, “Chimpanzee utterances refute purported missing links for novel vocalizations and syllabic speech,” was published in Nature: Scientific Reports on July 25, 2024.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.