Talking Monkeys?

For years, researchers and scientists have been curious about primates and their ability to talk. We know that monkeys and chimpanzees are very smart, and have the ability to learn, but why don't they talk like us humans?

It is known that speech is one of the most powerful and a successful adaptation to humans. In order to understand why monkeys do not talk, researchers decided to do some experimenting. The first thing they looked at was the vocal tract of these animals, and realized that they are very similar to humans and have the ability to vocalize. But they believe that the monkey's brains are not wired properly to make speech and words. The adaptation of speech didn't only take place in our vocal tract, but also in our brains. As studies went on, the researchers discovered that monkeys can make a variety of different sounds, but also struggle with sounds, especially vowels.


http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/12/why-monkeys-can-t-talk-and-what-they-would-sound-if-they-could

Genes and Learning How to Talk.

In the article I read it discusses the relationship between learning to talk and the ROBO2 gene. The gene is located on chromosome 3, which is also related to dyslexia and some speech related disorders. This gene codes for the ROBO2 protein, which helps direct chemicals to brain and other neuronal cells. These cell formations help to develop language and produce sounds. The researchers who were apart of this project found the link between the ages of 15-18 months. At this time the toddlers know about 200 words but are not yet speaking in phrases. Finding this discovery made sense of infants who had no other health issues, but were falling behind with learning to communicate.
Personally, I think this discovery is great because there is many infants who do not learn to talk or communicate at an average pace. There seemed to be, up until now no explanation as to why a perfectly healthy infant with no other apparent problems would not be able to talk. This discovery may not be as important as a lot of other things, but people with a child who seemed to be delayed with communication now have some answers to questions they may have had. I think any discovery big or small, is a great one!