Chimpanzees capable of learning new dialects, food calls

According to the recent study chimpanzees have special "words" that they use for different types of food and can even learn the calls or grunts used by strangers from foreign groups.

Chimpanzees living in captivity are capable of learning calls that refer to specific food items. This was shown by an evolutionary biologist from the University of Zurich together with English researchers.

The research suggested that great apes are capable of referring to objects and socially learn meaningful calls.

Non-human primates like chimpanzees are arguably capable of producing alarm and food calls,that refer to objects in their environment. However so far researchers assumed, that the acoustic structures of these calls are an expression of their excitement and cannot be controlled by the chimpanzees.

Now Simon Townsend, Evolutionary biologist from the University of Zurich has shown together with his English colleagues that also chimpanzees can learn calls that refer to specific objects.

For their study the researchers recorded the grunt calls for apple before the integration in 2010. They then recorded the same grunt calls one year after integration and again in 2013.

The team of re-searchers found that the fact that they lived together for a year and heard the different grunt call for apple from the other group members was not sufficient to cause the changes in their call structure. Only in 2013, when analyses of the social network showed strong friendships between the two group members were formed, a change in the call structure could be observed.

The study is published in the journal Current Biology.