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The coolest orangutans use slang

Orangutans make a “kiss-squeak” noise when they see a predator to warn each other of danger.
Orangutans make a “kiss-squeak” noise when they see a predator to warn each other of danger.

What makes an orangutan popular with its fellow apes? Fighting ability? The food it gathers? Or maybe it’s something we humans are familiar with: slang. Like the cool kids in high school, orangutans show off their “it” factor by using, and creating, the hippest lingo in the forest.

That’s according to a study that observed orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra. Collecting thousands of hours of observation over more than a decade, researchers recorded six wild orangutan communities as they went about their lives. Specifically, the researchers listened for the “kiss-squeak” call, the sound these apes make when they fear a nearby predator. They found that different communities not only had different variants of the kiss-squeak, but within each community, further variants of the kiss-squeak rose and fell in popularity.

Humans are no stranger to linguistic variation; after all, what’s “cool” today was “groovy” not so long ago. Orangutans, too, strive to be hip to the latest vocabulary. But what version of the kiss-squeak stays in style depends on an important social factor: population density.

When lots of orangutans live close to one another, their kiss-squeak variants have a high turnover rate, as the orangutans eagerly seek out the newest, trendiest slang. Meanwhile, orangutans who live in low-density communities tend to enjoy one version of the kiss-squeak for longer.

The study reminds us that orangutans have much to say: Creating slang, and speaking with consonant- and vowel-like sounds, they begin to tell us of language’s evolution in both man and ape.

Pretty cool, huh?

Reviewer: Adriano R. Lameira, the University of Warwick

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What makes an orangutan popular with its fellow apes? Fighting ability? The food it gathers? Or maybe it’s something we humans are familiar with: slang. Like the cool kids in high school, orangutans show off their “it” factor by using, and creating, the hippest lingo in the forest.

That’s according to a study that observed orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra. Collecting thousands of hours of observation over more than a decade, researchers recorded six wild orangutan communities as they went about their lives. Specifically, the researchers listened for the “kiss-squeak” call, the sound these apes make when they fear a nearby predator. They found that different communities not only had different variants of the kiss-squeak, but within each community, further variants of the kiss-squeak rose and fell in popularity.

Humans are no stranger to linguistic variation; after all, what’s “cool” today was “groovy” not so long ago. Orangutans, too, strive to be hip to the latest vocabulary. But what version of the kiss-squeak stays in style depends on an important social factor: population density. When lots of orangutans live close to one another, their kiss-squeak variants have a high turnover rate, as the orangutans eagerly seek out the newest, trendiest slang. Meanwhile, orangutans who live in low-density communities tend to enjoy one version of the kiss-squeak for longer.

The study reminds us that orangutans have much to say: Creating slang, and speaking with consonant- and vowel-like sounds, they begin to tell us of language’s evolution in both man and ape. Pretty cool, huh?

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