

What would a monkey say if it could talk ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Thomas Schoch

Scientists at Princeton University have simulated what an English-speaking macaque would sound like.

Despite the fact that monkey vocalizations sound nothing like human language, their vocal anatomy is actually capable of producing intelligible human speech. The only reason they can't reproduce human words is because their brains are structured differently to our own.In a recent study, researchers used x-ray videos to perfectly capture the lips, tongue and larynx of a macaque and then turned this data in to a computer simulation of the creature speaking in English.The eerie result, which says "will you marry me?", can be heard in the video below."Now nobody can say that it's something about the vocal anatomy that keeps monkeys from being able to speak -- it has to be something in the brain," said Dr Asif Ghazanfar."Even if this finding only applies to macaque monkeys, it would still debunk the idea that it's the anatomy that limits speech in non-humans.""Now, the interesting question is, what is it in the human brain that makes it special ?"