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Chimps Johnny and Renata Could Say ‘Mama’ Fluently, Scientists Reveal

A re-examination of recordings made in Italy and Florida is making scientists re-think what we understand about our nearest relatives.

Dr. Cornelius and Caesar from Planet of the Apes were not alone. Two chimpanzees have uttered the word “mama,” according to researchers analyzing old videos.

The discovery about two chimps — Johnny in Florida and Renata in Italy —offers intriguing insights into humanity's closest relatives and the evolution of human speech.

“Our analyses demonstrate that chimpanzees are capable of syllabic production,” researchers wrote in Scientific Reports. “Great ape vocal production capacities have been underestimated. Chimpanzees possess the neural building blocks necessary for speech.”

The researchers from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the University of Coventry in the UK found that there was no pattern of the chimps making vocal sounds like “mama” in nature, suggesting that the species may be capable of “auditory learning.”

Chimps, our closest living relatives, descended from the same single ancestor species six to seven million years ago. Humans and chimps share 98.8 per cent of the same DNA. But for decades scientists have not been able to explain why humans can speak while other primates cannot.

Now a re-examination of 20th century research and a find on YouTube have led to the discovery of talking chimps. One video from 2007 showed Johnny at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, Florida, saying “mama,” as a woman fed him in a cage. Another video from 1962 showed Renata, a chimp in Italy, uttering the same word.

The research was designed to re-examine an experiment conducted in the late 1940s, when Keith and Catherine Hayes adopted a chimpanzee named Viki and attempted to teach her words. After years of effort, they said that Viki could say “papa,” “mama,” “up,” and “cup,” though her speech was far from fluent and lacked vowels after the consonants in the words.

Scientists came to largely dismiss these experiments, citing the trauma inflicted on the animals and the lack of conclusive results. The animals, despite intensive training, could only produce rudimentary sounds.

But in the video recordings, both Johnny and Renata — unlike Viki — could add vowels after consonants, the researchers concluded, after asking 61 volunteers to listen carefully to the recordings.

Johnny and Renata may not be the only talking members of the ape family. An 11-year-old orangutan in Indianapolis named Rocky can mimic the sounds of human speech, according to another study in Scientific Reports. Rocky’s sounds are called “wookies,” a tribute to the fictional aliens in Star Wars.

Recent research has shown other ways that chimps act like humans. Scientists in Uganda observed that even when food is scarce and they’re exhausted, mother chimps prioritize playing with their children.

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