The Speech of Monkeys

In this case I noticed the defects which occurred in my work and provided against them, as well as I could, for the future. Soon after this I went to Chicago and Cincinnati, where I made a number of records of the sounds of a great number of monkeys, and among others I secured a splendid record of the two chimpanzees contained in the Cincinnati collection, which I brought home with me for study. The records that I made of various specimens of the Simian race I repeated to myself over and over, until I became familiar with them, and learned to imitate a few of them, mostly by the use of mechanical devices. After having accomplished this I returned to Chicago, and went at once to visit a small Capuchin monkey whose record had been my chief study. Standing near his cage, I imitated a sound which I had translated "milk," but from many tests I concluded it meant "food," which opinion has been somewhat modified by many later experiments which led me to believe that he uses it in a still wider sense. It is difficult to find any formula of human speech equivalent to it. While the Capuchin uses it relating to food and sometimes to drink, I was unable to detect any difference in the sounds. He also seemed to connect the same sound to every kindly office done him, and to use it as a kind of "Shibboleth." More recently, however, I have detected in the sound slight changes of inflection under different conditions, until I am now led to believe that the meaning of the word depends somewhat, if not wholly, on its modulation. The phonetic effect is rich and rather flute-like, and the word resembles somewhat the word "who." Its dominant is a pure vocal "u," sounded like "oo" in "too," which has a faint initial "wh," both elements of which are sounded, and the word ends with a vanishing "w." The literal formula by which I would represent it is "wh-oo-w." The word which I have translated "drink" begins with a faint guttural "ch," and glides through a sound resembling the French diphthong "eu," and ends with a slight "y" sound as in "ye."