A CHIMP’S throat develops much like a person’s. This finding challenges our assumptions about when and how humans evolved the ability to talk.
In humans, the larynx and the hyoid bone move down the throat during childhood, changing the shape of the vocal tract. That allows us to make complex sounds, a capability that anthropologists thought was uniquely human.
But MRI scans of three infant chimps taken by Takeshi Nishimura and a team from Kyoto University in Inuyama, Japan, show the animals’ larynxes also descend in the first year of life, though not their hyoid bones (Proceedings of the National…
