Orangutans use slang to 'show off their coolness', study suggests

Primates come up with new ‘kiss-squeak’ alarm calls that spread quickly through communities, research says

Nicola Davis Science correspondent
@NicolaKSDavis
Mon 21 Mar 2022 12.00 EDT

Whether it is the rapidly shifting patois of teenagers or curious words found long-buried in the local argot of a rural community, our vocabularies are shaped by our social environs. Now, it seems, such influences might also be at play among orangutans.

Researchers studying the “kiss-squeak” alarm calls of wild communities of the apes in Borneo and Sumatra have found that rather than such sounds being innate and hardwired, as was long thought, orangutans are able to come up with new versions of the calls, varying in pitch and duration.

What’s more the frequency of novel calls – and whether the new versions stick – are influenced by the density of the local community.

“The way I see it is that low densities [of] orangutans have a slang repertoire that they constantly revisit and use. They are ‘conservative’, but once a new call variant is used, everyone hears it and the variant is quickly incorporated, enriching the slang,” said Dr Adriano Lameira, first author of the research from the department of psychology at the University of Warwick.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/mar/21/orangutans-use-slang-to-show-off-their-coolness-study-suggests