TOO FAR TO SHOUT

[spectre]

http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/too-far-to-shout/

"Reportedly, some of the commonly used Silbo introductions have been
picked up and repeated by birds."

WHISTLING AS LANGUAGE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language
http://www.crystalinks.com/whistledlanguage.html

"Languages communicated by whistling are relatively rare, but are
known from around the world. One example is the Silbo on the island of
La Gomera in the Canary Islands, which maintains Spanish's five
vowels, but reduces its consonants down to four. Others exist or
existed in all parts of the world including Turkey (Kusköy "Village of
the Birds"), France (the village of Aas in the Pyrenees), Mexico (the
Zapotecs of Oaxaca), South America (Piraha), Asia (the Chepang of
Nepal), and New Guinea. They are especially common and robust today in
parts of West Africa, used widely in such populous languages as Yoruba
and Ewe. Even French is whistled in some areas of western Africa.

In continental Africa, speech may be conveyed by a whistle or other
musical instrument, most famously the "talking drums". However, while
drums may be used by griots singing praise songs or for inter-village
communication, and other instruments may be used on the radio for
station identification jingles, for regular conversation at a distance
whistled speech is used. As two people approach each other, one may
even switch from whistled to spoken speech in mid-sentence.

In the Greek village of Antia, the entire population knows how to
whistle their speech, and whistled conversations are also carried on
at close range.

As the expressivity of whistled speech is limited compared to spoken
speech, whistled messages typically consist of stereotyped or
otherwise standardized or set expressions, are elaborately
descriptive, and often have to be repeated.

However, in languages which are heavily tonal, and therefore convey
much of their information through pitch even when spoken, such as
Mazatec and Yoruba, extensive conversations may be whistled.

In Africa and indigenous Mexican communities, whistled language is
used only by men.

Whistled languages are normally found and used in locations with
abrupt relief created by difficult mountainous terrain, slow or
difficult communication (no telephones), low population density and/or
scattered settlements, and other isolating features such as
sheepherding and cultivation of hillsides.

The main advantage of whistling speech is that it allows the speaker
to cover much larger distances (typically 1­2 km but up to 5 km) than
ordinary speech, and this is assisted by the relief found in areas
where whistled languages are used. In practice, many areas with such
languages work hard to preserve their ancient traditions, in the face
of rapidly advancing telecommunications systems in many areas.

A whistled tone is essentially a simple oscillation (or sine wave),
and thus timbral variations are impossible. Normal articulation during
an ordinary lip-whistle is relatively easy though the lips move little
causing a constant of labialization and making labial and labiodental
consonants (p, b, m, f, etc.) impossible.

Apart from the five vowel-phonemes - and even these do not invariably
have a fixed or steady pitch - all whistled speech-sound realizations
are glides which are interpreted in terms of range, contour, and
steepness.

In a non-tonal language, segments may be differentiated as follows:
* Vowels are replaced by a set of relative pitch ranges
* Stress is expressed by higher pitch or increased length
* Consonants are produced by pitch transitions of different lengths
and height, plus the presence or absence of occlusion. ("Labial stops
are replaced by diaphragm or glottal occlusions.")

In the case of Silbo Gomero, such strategies produce five vowels and
four consonants.

Though whistled languages are not secret codes or secret languages,
with the exception of a whistled language used by nanigos terrorists
in Cuba during Spanish occupation, they may be used for secretive
communication among outsiders or other who do not know or understand
the whistled language though they may understand its spoken origin.
Supposedly, in Aas during World War II farmers were nearly caught
watering down their milk but police were unable to find any evidence
as the farmers were warned by whistled messages of the police
approaching and were able to prepare. There are similar stories of La
Gomera.

LA GOMERA ANECDOTE
http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-419.html
[Thanks to K. Beesley and M. Kuha]
"My brother was once hiking around Gomera with a friend. They ran out
of drinking water and asked a local person for some. This person said
she didn't have any (it was a very dry area!) but her neighbor up the
mountain could help. "I'll let her know you're coming" she said, and
whistled up the mountain. They walked up the mountain. My brother
walked ahead and arrived first. When he got to the house, a stranger
sitting there said: "Ah, there you are. The water's right around the
corner there; but where is your friend?"

Why Whistle?
- Essentially, to allow shepherds to communicate across narrow valleys
when ordinary language would be inadequate. Distances, normally 1-2
km, can reach 5 km or more.
- It is also used in Africa and Nepal for communication during a hunt.
- It may be used for secrecy, but not for games.

Which Languages Are Also Whistled And Where?
- Mexico: Mazatec, Tepehua, Nahua, Otomi, Totonac, Kickapoo,
Chinantec, Zapotec, Amuzgo, Chol.
- Bolivia: Siriono
- France (village of Aas, French Pyrenees): Spanish
- Spain (Canary Islands): Gomero Spanish ("el silbo")
- Turkey: Kuskoy
- West Africa: Ewe, Tshi, Marka, Ule, Daguri, Birifor, Burunsi, Bobo,
Bafia, Bape.
- Nepal: Chepang
- Burma: Chin
- New Guinea: Gasup, Binumarien
- Whistled languages are usually found in areas of low population
density and difficult terrain. They are not linked with any particular
linguistic group or language type.

Who?
- Only males in Mexico and Africa. Both sexes in Europe. Children are
initiated early where whistling is used on a normal basis.

When?
- Whistled language has a remote, possibly pre-historic, origin; it is
first mentioned in the literature in the 17th century
- It is extinct in Aas; in decline elsewhere, mainly because of the
availability of telephones and other means of modern communication
- Apparently, "el silbo" is still taught in a Gomera school in the
small village of Chipude, by Isidro Ortiz (tel.: 801013)

How?
- Apart from the African cases where a whistle (the tool) is used,
communication consists of whistled realizations of the local language
- Pitch variation are produced by the tongue, with its tip pressed
against the teeth, and with the lips immobilized in a rounded or
spread position (use of fingers is optional)
- Each phoneme has a whistled equivalent. Given the loss of jaw and
lip movement by comparison with ordinary speech, phonetic distinctions
are harder to produce. Hence a strong reliance on repetition and
context, and a preference for phonemically-simple languages and for
the communication of short, simple, routine messages

* Vowel aperture is replaced by a set of more or less stable pitch
ranges (only relative - not absolute - Fo matters). In general, vowels
are not clearly distinguished.
* Consonants are produced by pitch transitions between vowels.

Transition length and height, plus the presence/absence of occlusion,
are used for differentiation purposes. Labial stops are replaced by
diaphragm or glottal occlusions.
- Stress is expressed by higher pitch or increased length
- Intonation exists, but conflicts with segmental pitch changes.
Hence, for instance, a preference for lexical over tonal questions.

Varia
- Apparently, a different pitch range can point to a different
dialect.
- The sex of a whistler can usually be identified, but of course less
surely than with regular speech
- In tone languages, such as Mazatec and Tepehua mentioned above, some
sacrifice of articulation is necessary to preserve tone patterns. This
may explain why whistling is used at closer range in these cases.

SILBO GOMERO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero_language
http://silbo-gomero.com/mp3s/BBC-SilboGomeroInterview-8-26-08-JeffBrent-IsidroOrtiz.mp3
http://silbo-gomero.com/

LEARN SILBO
http://www.busuu.com/silbo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqdAnGDMU2k

LECTURE DEMONSTRATION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAU55bOalZw

NOW COMPULSORY FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN
MOBILE PHONE OF ITS ERA
http://www.euranet.eu/eng/content/view/full/10515
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3241128.stm
Canary Island whistles again

A means of communication using whistling is being revived after nearly
vanishing from the one island on which it is used. The language is
called Silbo Gomero, and is only heard on the Canary Island of La
Gomera, off the coast of Morocco. Until recently those who
communicated in Silbo were dying out - but the government of the
island made it compulsory for all schoolchildren on the island to
study it, and now it is making a comeback. "There are real masters of
Silbo, but most of them are now very old," Francisco Rivero, a
researcher in the University of La Laguna in the Canary Islands, told
BBC World Service's Outlook programme. "So the local government
decided to introduce it to elementary schools, so that children can
learn the Silbo technique. "It's taught in schools as a way of making
children aware of their local culture."

Berber link
Silbo has only four vowels and four consonants. The key to it is
understanding the meaning of the many different tones of the whistles.
It can be heard more than two miles away - which was the key to its
being sustained on the La Gomera. The language has been passed on from
father to son as it was essential to be able to communicate over long
distances across the inaccessible valleys. "The island is very hilly,
with lots of ravines, which make communication very difficult,"
explained Dr Rivero. As a result, a tradition developed whereby if one
person heard a whistle, they passed it on. Islanders got so skilled at
it that messages have been successfully passed right from one end of
the island to the other. "Historically, from the earliest settlers on
the Canaries, the Silbo language was the mobile phone of the period,"
Dr Rivero said. "[It] allowed people to communicate across great
distances, because its frequency allowed the sound to be transmitted.
"This form of communication dates back before the Spanish conquest, in
the 15th Century."

Structure
Silbo is believed to have come to the island from the Berber people of
Morocco, Dr Rivero added. The Canary Islands have very strong links
with Morocco, particularly the Berbers, and there is evidence that
there may be some people deep in the Atlas mountains who also use
whistling to communicate. However, Silbo on La Gomera is unique as it
has adopted Spanish speech patterns. "It's practically a language in
itself - just like Castilian Spanish - but it relies on tones rather
than vowels and consonants," Dr Rivero stated. "The tones are
whispered at different frequencies, using Spanish grammar. If we spoke
English here, we'd use an English structure for whistling. "It's not
just disjointed words - it flows, and you can have a proper
conversation."

SUPERSTITION EXPLAINED
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Whistling
"Whistling in theatre, particularly on-stage, is considered extremely
unlucky. Before the invention of electronic means of communication,
sailors were often used as stage technicians, working with the
complicated rope systems associated with flying. Coded whistles would
be used to call cues, so it is thought that whistling on-stage may
cause, for example, a cue to come early, a "sailor's ghost" to drop a
batten or flat on top of an actor, or general bad luck in the
performance."

NOT SECRET CODE BUT
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Whistled_language
"Though whistled languages are not secret codes or secret languages
(with the exception of a whistled language used by ñañigos
insurgencies in Cuba during Spanish occupation (Busnel and Classe
1976: 22)), they may be used for secretive communication among
outsiders or others who do not know or understand the whistled
language though they may understand its spoken origin. Stories are
told of farmers in Aas during World War II, or in La Gomera, who were
able to hide evidence of such nefarious activities as milk-watering
because they were warned in whistle-speech that the police were
approaching (Busnel and Classe 1976: 15)."

FRENCH RESISTANCE
http://seffalice.blogspot.com/2008/11/whistling-language-of-aas.html
from Graham Robb's chapter on the French language, in The Discovery of
France
"The Pyrenean village of Aas, at the foot of the Col d'Aubisque, above
the spa town of Eax-Bonnes, had its own whistling language which was
unknown even in the neighbouring valleys until it was mentioned on a
television programme in 1959. Shepherds who spent the summer months in
lonely cabins had evolved an ear-splitting, hundred-decibel language
that could be understood at a distance of up to two miles. It was also
used by the women who worked in the surrounding fields and was
apparently versatile enough in the early twentieth century to convey
the contents of the local newspaper. Its last known use was during the
Nazi Occupation, when shepherds helped Jewish refugees, Résistants and
stranded pilots to cross the border into Spain. A few people in Aas
today remember hearing the language, but no one can reproduce the
sounds and no recordings were ever made."

BIRD VILLAGE
http://www.trivia-library.com/a/history-and-information-on-languages-and-linguistics-part-2.htm

An equally unusual means of communication is the whistle language of
Kuskoy or Bird Village in Turkey. No one knows how the whistle
language evolved, although it might have begun as a warning signal for
Black Sea smugglers or others engaged in illegal activity. Bird
Village, about 80 mi. southwest of Trabzon, takes its name from the
birdlike whistling that the villagers often use in place of words.
Voices don't carry far in the mountainous region, but the shrill
whistles can be heard for miles, the high-pitched sounds carrying news
of births and deaths, love affairs, and all the latest gossip. The
whistling serves as a kind of house-to-house telegraph system. In
order to get the power to "transmit," the whistler curls his tongue
around his teeth so that the air is forced through his lips. No pucker
is made, as in most whistling. To amplify the sound, the palm is
cupped around the mouth and the whistling "words" come out with a
great blast. It's said that the language is so powerful and complex
that lovers can even romance each other with tender whistles from as
far away as 5 mi. A similar whistling language is "spoken" by
villagers in the Canary Islands, though a Kuskoyite wouldn't be
understood if he whistled to someone there.

Then, of course, there are the so-called secret languages that range
from Cockney rhyming slang, underworld jargon, and carny talk to the
Pig Latin of schoolboys that can be traced back to the early 17th
century. One of the most interesting is the female secret language
developed by the women of Arawak, an island in the Lesser Antilles.
This language was invented when fierce South American Caribs invaded
the island before the time of Columbus, butchering and eating all the
relatively peaceful Arawak male inhabitants and claiming their women.
In retaliation, the women devised a separate female language based on
Arawak, refusing to speak Carib and maintaining silence in the
presence of all males, a revenge that was practiced for generations
afterward.

WHISTLING TURKS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/506284.stm
Farmers whistle as part of their everyday business
By Chris Morris / 6 November, 1999

I arrived at Halil Cindik's house as he was having a chat with his
friend Kucuk. You know the sort of thing, just a couple of neighbours
chewing the cud across the garden fence.

Except in this case, they were somewhat further apart, several hundred
metres apart in fact, across a rather wide valley. They're used to it
of course, having grown up in this land of vibrant green mountains and
steep wooded slopes near the southern shores of the Black Sea. Houses
in the village of Kuskoy perch precariously above little more than
thin air. Now the telephone only arrived in these parts a few years
ago, so for generations if you did want to talk to your neighbours
there was no choice. It was not so much sing for your supper as
whistle down the wind.

Bird village
Kuskoy literally means the Bird Village and if you can't whistle, well
you're probably not from round here. I would try to give you a quick
example, but sadly all I could manage was a rather unpleasant
raspberry sound. I can accompany my favourite tune on the radio as
well as anyone, but this is no ordinary whistle. Intensive training
from my hosts on how precisely to angle my tongue and rest my
forefinger on my front teeth produced only further embarrassment. In
the end, I had to settle for another cup of tea, and the dunce's hat
in the corner. Kuskoy's champion whistlers, on the other hand, do it
loud and proud - with a decibel level anywhere between noticeable and
ear-splitting. Halil and Kucuk make it look and sound ever so easy,
but earplugs could occasionally be an advantage. I wouldn't want to
get caught in a heated argument on a long winter's night.

Bird language
And argue they can, because there's a whole language of whistles which
about 1,000 people in and around Kuskoy use. Anything they can say in
Turkish, they can whistle as well. And when your best friend is just
across the valley - but it takes an hour of rock scrambling to get
there - it's a pretty useful talent to have. At the moment they have
29 separate whistled noises, one for each letter of the Turkish
alphabet. But there could be more - just alter the angle of the
tongue, and away you go. Education in the fine art of whistling begins
at an early age, and it's a bit like learning to talk - all the local
kids pick it up in the end. Practice makes perfect, and the shrill
sound of local chatter echoes down the valley more or less constantly.

A long history
No one really knows exactly when it started, only why. But the writer
Xenophon described people shouting across valleys in the same region
more than 2,000 years ago. Long-distance whistling in Kuskoy is passed
down from generation to generation, and it probably has a long
history. There are a handful of other villages around the world where
the same tradition thrives in similar remote regions of Mexico, Greece
and Spain. But Kuskoy believes it boasts the largest concentration of
whistlers on the planet. It's determined that its language will not be
allowed to wither and die as people move away from the village, and
modern technology intrudes into the mountains. Most people in the area
are farmers of one sort or another, and they still whistle as part of
their everyday business. News that a lorry might be coming to pick up
the tea harvest, or that someone in the valley round the corner has
some leaves to sell, whistles quickly through the community.

Technological onslaught
It's much more than a gimmick. But can this extraordinary language
really survive the technological onslaught? Regular telephones were
one thing, but mobiles and laptops are quite another. No telegraph
poles, no fuss, and no need to venture out onto the roof to whistle
across the valley in a sudden mountain storm. It is a significant
threat, and the locals admit that sometimes they get a little lazy.
But they are determined that what they call their bird language will
continue to flourish. As we all get swept along faster and faster by
the giddy currents of the communications revolution, the message from
Kuskoy is simple - that sometimes the old ways are still the best
ones.

NO MISUNDERSTANDING
http://www.languagetrainers.co.uk/blog/2007/11/20/go-whistle/
"The Mazateco Indians of Oxaca, Mexico, are frequently seen whistling
back and forth, exchanging greetings or buying and selling goods with
no risk of misunderstanding. The whistling is not really a language
ore even a code; it simple uses the rhythms and pitch of ordinary
speech without the words. Similar whistling languages have been found
in Greece, Turkey and China, whilst other forms of wordless
communication include the talking drums (ntumpane) of the Kele in
Congo, the xylophones used by the Northern Chin of Burma (Myanmar),
the banging on the roots of trees practised by the Melanesians, the
yodeling of the Swiss, the humming of the Chekiang Chinese and the
smoke signals of the American Indians."

BRAIN RESEARCH
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0105_050105_whistle_language.html
Herders' Whistled Language Shows Brain's Flexibility
BY James Owen / January 5, 2005

Shepherds who whistle to each other across the rocky terrain of the
Canary Islands off northwest Africa are shedding light on the language-
processing abilities of the human brain, according to scientists.
Researchers say the endangered whistled "language'" of Gomera island
activates parts of the brain normally associated with spoken language,
suggesting that the brain is remarkably flexible in its ability to
interpret sounds as language.

The findings are published in tomorrow's issue of the science journal
Nature. "Science has developed the idea of brain areas that are
dedicated to language, and we are starting to understand the scope of
signals that can be recognized as language," said David Corina, co-
author of the study and associate professor of psychology at the
University of Washington in Seattle. Silbo Gomero is a substitute for
Spanish, with individual words recoded into whistles. Vowels and
consonants are replaced by tones that are whistled at different
frequencies. ("Silbo" comes from the Spanish "silbar"—to whistle.)

Known as silbadores, the whistlers of Gomera are traditionally
shepherds and other isolated mountain folk. Their novel means of
staying in touch allows them to communicate over long distances—
Silbador whistles can travel up to six miles (ten kilometers).
"Spanish consonants are mapped into four different whistles and the
five vowels into two whistles," explained lead researcher Manuel
Carreiras, psychology professor at the University of La Laguna on the
Canary island of Tenerife. "There is much more ambiguity in the
whistled signal than in the spoken signal," he added. Because whistled
"words" can be hard to distinguish, silbadores also rely on repetition
and context to make themselves understood.

Brain Activity
The study team used neuroimaging equipment to contrast the brain
activity of silbadores while listening to whistled and spoken Spanish.
Results showed the left temporal lobe of the brain, which is usually
associated with spoken language, was engaged during the processing of
Silbo Gomero.

The researchers found that other regions in the brain's frontal lobe
also responded to the whistles, including those activated in response
to sign language among deaf people. However, brain areas activated in
experienced Silbadores differed significantly from those in
nonwhistlers who listened to the same sounds but could not understand
them. "Our results provide more evidence about the flexibility of
human capacity for language in a variety of forms," Corina said.
"These data suggest that left-hemisphere language regions are uniquely
adapted for communicative purposes, independent of the modality of
signal. The non-Silbo speakers were not recognizing Silbo as a
language. They had nothing to grab onto, so multiple areas of their
brains were activated."

Carreiras said silbadores are able to pass a surprising amount of
information via their whistles. "The shepherds could whistle a
conversation about relativity theory if they wanted, however, they
usually talk about other things," he said. "In daily life they use
whistles to communicate short commands, but any Spanish sentence could
be whistled." A silbador sticks a finger in his or her mouth to
increase the whistle's pitch. The other hand can be cupped like a
megaphone to direct the sound.

African Roots
Carreiras says the origins of Silbo Gomero remain obscure but that
indigenous Canary Islanders, who were of North African extraction,
already had a whistled language when Spain conquered the volcanic
islands in the 15th century. Whistled languages survive today in Papua
New Guinea, Mexico, Vietnam, Guyana, China, Nepal, Senegal, and a few
mountainous pockets in southern Europe. There are thought to be as
many as 70 whistled languages still in use, though only 12 have been
described and studied scientifically.

This form of communication is an adaptation found among cultures where
people are often isolated from each other, according to Julien Meyer,
a researcher at the Institute of Human Sciences in Lyon, France. "They
are mostly used in mountains or dense forests," he said. Whistled
languages, Meyer said, "are quite clearly defined and represent an
original adaptation of the spoken language—like a local cellular phone—
for the needs of isolated human groups."

But with modern communication technologies now widely available,
researchers say whistled languages like Silbo Gomero are threatened
with extinction. "It was a way of communication over deep valleys and
steep mountains," Carreiras said. "Now you can do that with cell
phones." With dwindling numbers of Gomera islanders still fluent in
the language, Canaries authorities are taking steps to try to ensure
its survival. Since 1999 Silbo Gomero has been taught in all of
Gomera's elementary schools. In addition, locals are seeking
assistance from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO). "The local authorities are trying to
get an award from UNESCO to declare [Silbo Gomero] as something that
should be preserved for humanity," Carreiras added.

DIALECTS:
ALASKAN ESKIMO
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4713068
Yupik Eskimos and their Russian cousins have long practiced this form
of whistling communication.

CHINANTEC
http://www.sil.org/mexico/chinanteca/sochiapam/13i-Conversacion-cso.htm
A whistled conversation in Sochiapam Chinantec

FOR THE WHISTLING LINGUISTICS COMPLETIST
http://www.lemondesiffle.free.fr/presentation_eng/languessifflees.htm
http://www.lemondesiffle.free.fr/projet_eng/science/biblio.htm
http://rolexawards.com/en/the-laureates/julienmeyer-the-project.jsp
Internet connects those who whistle language
BY Manuela Palma de Figueiredo / 2006

Suddenly, in the constant rustling of the Thai jungle, a clear, strong
whistle cuts through the air. Meaningless to the uninitiated, this
melodious phrase, resembling birdsong, carries precise information:
hidden in the dense tropical vegetation, a hunter from the Hmong
people is sending a long-distance message to his fellow-hunters about
their plan for trapping a wild boar they have been tracking for hours.

Languages facing extinction
This event, like something from the ancient past, is by no means
confined to one isolated group. Unknown to most people, and
marginalized by linguists, whistled languages have been used the world
over for millennia, but are now threatened with extinction within this
generation or the next. Passionately interested in languages and all
modern forms of communication, Julien Meyer, a 30-year-old French bio-
acoustician and linguist, refuses to simply do nothing while a part of
the world’s heritage is threatened by the movement of people from the
countryside to the cities and by the emergence of new technology. Over
the past 10 years, he has verified the existence of 34 whistled and
drummed languages throughout the world, and devoted his skills and
energy to studying, documenting and preserving a dozen of them. For
his determination to safeguard a fast-disappearing, age-old practice,
Julien Meyer has been selected as an Associate Laureate in the 2006
Rolex Awards.

Languages tie human beings to nature
Whistled languages communicate over distances like a mobile phone, but
they are free and no technology is required. They faithfully transpose
the grammar, syntax and, syllable by syllable, the vocabulary of the
spoken languages they are based on, producing an accurate rhythmic and
melodic copy of them. Other languages exist in drummed form, which is
less precise and more repetitive, and is used more for making public
announcements than for dialogue.

Whistled and drummed languages are used in Latin America, Europe,
Africa, Asia and Oceania, in remote areas which have a very rich
biodiversity. They overcome distance – up to 30 kilometres for talking
drums – and cut through background noise, demonstrating the
extraordinary adaptability of groups living in mountainous areas and
dense forest, where communication is a constant challenge. "Whistled
and drummed speech unites humans and nature by means of language,"
Meyer explains. "Sound needs the natural environment as a carrier to
propagate it over a long distance. In addition, these communication
methods are a unique source of information about their users’
environment and social life."

Taking steps to preserve a dying form of communication
The first studies of whistled languages were carried out in 1950 by
Professor René-Guy Busnel. This famous French scientist, now retired,
was the first to study this form of language in terms of linguistics
as well as acoustics. Since then, however, whistled speech has raised
little interest among linguists, and almost half a century went by
before Meyer took up the cause of this fascinating method of
communication.

In 1997, while studying at the Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieurs (school
of higher engineering studies) in Marseille, France, Meyer dreamed of
working on languages and being able to apply his technical knowledge
to concrete cases. He stumbled on an article about Béarnais, an
extinct whistled language from the Pyrenees Mountains in France. It
was an eye-opener for Meyer. "It struck me that whistled languages
provided a natural link between telecommunication systems and human
language," he recalls. He immediately immersed himself in the
literature about this unusual subject and began planning visits to
regions where people use whistled and drummed languages. He taught
himself the spoken languages of some of these regions (he now speaks
six languages) and, once he had completed his diploma in bio-
acoustics, he set about acquiring the linguistic skills necessary to
study whistled and drummed languages. During this time he discovered
Busnel’s work, and was spellbound. Eventually they met, and from the
first discussions, it was a meeting of like minds. "Julien is the
inheritor of my scientific past," says Busnel, who was born in 1914.

Developing a worldwide network for study
Faithful to the pioneering thinking of the man he regards as his
“oldest friend”, Julien Meyer was convinced that the key to
understanding whistled languages lay in studying them acoustically as
well as linguistically. In 2003, he travelled around the world,
forging close links with whistling communities and master drummers in
France, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, the Republic of
Vanuatu, Laos, Thailand, Nepal, Turkey and Greece. During his travels
he recorded about 30 hours of whistled and drummed languages for
subsequent analysis using the most advanced acoustic techniques. The
recordings also provided material for his doctoral thesis on the
intelligibility of whistled languages, written in 2005 for the
University of Lyon 2 and the National Centre for Scientific Research
(CNRS), in France.

Taking the project on-line
This was only the start, however, for the brilliant bio-acoustician
who had an even bigger goal in mind: to preserve this priceless
cultural heritage at risk of constant erosion by modern technology –
which could, ironically, also hold the key to keeping this heritage
alive. Meyer will now set up, with the funds from his Rolex Award, an
interactive Internet site featuring recordings, photographs and
documentation on whistled and drummed languages. This project, 'The
World Whistles’, will be undertaken with close cooperation with the
people who use whistled and drummed languages. They will also
contribute to the site and oversee the use of the data on it. "By
giving them the opportunity to take over modern technology for their
own use, and to communicate with other whistling and drumming people
whose existence they never even dreamed of, I’m hoping to revive their
belief in their own culture. Whistled and drummed languages belong to
the people who use them," insists Meyer, for whom human beings are
clearly more important than scientific results. "Respect for our
fellow man is the first condition in acquiring knowledge."

CONTACT
Julien Meyer
http://www.theworldwhistles.org
http://www.lemondesiffle.free.fr/whistledLanguages.htm
email : julien.meyer [at] theworldwhistles [dot] org / julien.meyer
[at] etu.univ-lyon2 [dot] fr

WHISTLING TO GRASSHOPPERS
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1131995/index.htm
The Pied Piper Of Hamelin Had Nothing On A Frenchman Who Summons
Grasshoppers, Crows And Tree Frogs With Calls Of The Wild
BY John O'Reilly / July 16, 1956

Dr. Rene-Guy Busnel, a vivacious French physiologist, has been
visiting American scientific centers telling his audiences how he can
whistle up grasshoppers and provoke numerous other reactions among
members of the animal kingdom by subjecting them to a variety of
sounds. In this country certain uses are made of animal responses to
sound. Hunters use crow calls, moose calls and duck calls. Bird
watchers attract birds with squeaking devices. The recorded and
amplified cries of a starling in anguish are used to scare off other
starlings. But Dr. Busnel, who is director of the Laboratoire de
Physiologie Acoustique of the Institut National de la Recherche
Agronomique in France, has delved much deeper into the subject. He is
a slender man with upright hair, which gives him a look of chronic
astonishment. This serves to emphasize his startling pronouncements.
He recently described how he and his assistants had recorded the
distress call of a crow when it was being attacked by a peregrine
falcon. Then he showed pictures of them taking a sound truck out into
the countryside where they played the recording real loud. Crows came
to the truck from two to three miles away and flew around it for 20
minutes, apparently intent upon ganging up on the falcon. They played
the sound backwards and still the crows came from afar.

Dr. Busnel's most impressive experiment came when he demonstrated his
power over female grasshoppers. First he described how the male
grasshopper of this particular species attracts the females during the
breeding season by emitting a series of sharp sounds. Then the lights
went out and he ran color motion pictures of the experiment. A
Frenchman was stretched prone on the ground blowing repeated blasts on
a small, shrill whistle. Some 20 feet away was a female grasshopper.
Steadily she crawled toward the whistler, making her way over weeds
and grass and sand. Slowly she walked up the Frenchman's arm, onto his
face and finally perched on his nose right over the whistle. This was
repeated time and again and soon grasshoppers were coming from several
directions. One climbed up on the whistler's arm, disappeared behind
his neck, then came into view over the top of his head and crawled
down his face to the whistle. At one point two Frenchmen, each with a
whistle, stretched out on the sand some 10 feet apart and with a
grasshopper between them. They kept calling the grasshopper back and
forth until it seemed that the creature would develop schizophrenia.

The physiologist related his surprise during a meeting in his
laboratory when a tree frog answered human applause. When the group
clapped their hands the frog croaked. This led to more experiments,
and Dr. Busnel played a recording of the frog croaking in response to
a metronome and to pieces of glass being clanked together. Going
beyond his own experiments Dr. Busnel told how the Chinese repel hawks
by putting whistles on the wings of their pigeons; that an automobile
horn will make a hippopotamus rise out of the water; that certain
sounds will make a crocodile open its mouth; and that African natives
attract fish with a crude device which makes sounds under water. The
French scientist was loth to discuss the practical applications of his
own discoveries other than to say that the economic uses of some of
them were obvious. It is evident that it would be a boon to farmers if
they could call crows out of their corn fields. It also is plain that
insect pests could be destroyed if the females could be called in at
breeding time. It may not be too farfetched to visualize a fisherman
collecting bait by whistling up grasshoppers and crickets. Many people
would like to order pigeons out of town and it would be good to
impress upon rabbits that they should stay out of the garden. There is
plenty that should be conveyed to mice and moles.

OMAN
http://www.chillonia.org/blog/?p=172
"I think of the distance between Casablanca and Muscat. The countries
mark the Western and Eastern edges of the Arab world; they are
separated by only a few thousand miles, but their customs are far more
divergent than the distance between them might imply. The language
which connects them is like a thread, which unravels at its edges. In
Morocco, it is mixed with Berber and French. In Oman, with the
whistling language of the mountain people."

WHISTLING TO DOLPHINS
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dxbkiwi/1/1206541980/tpod.html
"...we did not attract as many dolphins as we have seen previously but
all the same we did have a few come along side us for a distance to
the delight of all on board. The Omani's whistle and holler at the
dolphins believing that the noise attracts them to the boat..."

PRESENT
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9458681
http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/Audio/Life%20on%20Mars_.mp3
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/everett07/everett07_index.html
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/1161/
The Pirahã People
BY Leonardo Vintiñi / Jul 3, 2008

Discovered by phonetic expert Professor Dan Everett of Manchester
University in 1977, the Pirahã tribe of Brazil have perhaps the most
unusual language among the nearly 6000 found on earth. Free from
concepts of time, color, or specific quantity, the mind of the Pirahã
people appears to have been frozen in time—representing man in a
simpler state. Everett has put much effort into understanding the
Pirahã language, and their culture, for the past 25 years. As one of
very few outside the tribe who’ve managed to tackle this mysterious
language, Everett still makes up a significant percentage of Pirahã
speakers; the population of this unique Amazon tribe consists of only
a few hundred people. The language of the Pirahãs is extreme: it is
limited to 8 consonants for men, seven for women, and only three
vowels. It does not contain concepts for counting or simple arithmetic—
Everett notes that the Pirahã convey varying amounts through
approximation.

Immediate Experience
Perhaps most intriguing, Everett found that the Pirahãs don’t use
recursive phrases. In other words, they don’t insert phrases within
each other to combine different ideas to form a single sentence.
Everett thoroughly tested about 20 Pirahãs, and found that none of
them used a recursive clause. According to Everett, the Pirahã only
talk and think in terms of direct experience. The kind of referencing
that occurs in recursive phrases just isn’t a part of their thinking.
“[For the Pirahã] sentences…cannot be uttered acceptably in the
absence of a particular pair of animals or instructions about a
specific animal to a specific hunter. In other words, when such
sentences are used, they are describing specific experiences, not
generalizing across experiences. It is of course more difficult to say
that something does not exist than to show that it does exist, but… in
the context of my nearly three decades of regular research on Pirahã,
it leads me to the conclusion that there is no strong evidence for the
existence of quantifiers in Pirahã,” writes Everett in his 2005 paper
for Current Anthropology, ‘Cultural Constraints on Grammar and
Cognition in Pirahã.’

Despite Everett’s extensive study with this tribe, his claim for a
lack of recursion in the language has many colleagues doubting his
conclusions. The qualities of the Pirahã language, as described by
Everett, fly in the face of what many linguists consider a universal
law of all languages. According to the very influential linguist Noam
Chomsky, recursion is something that has proved innate to all human
thought throughout the world. Many insist that this infallible lingual
law is supposed to apply to absolutely all languages (except, of
course, that of the Pirahã). But Everett had only come to this
conclusion over time. While he had sensed a lack of recursion in the
language early on, for years Everett had been a devoted Chomskyan
linguist himself, and attempted to fit his findings within this
framework. Yet try as he might, he found that many aspects of the
Pirahã language did not adhere to the Chomsky model. “…some of the
components of so-called core grammar are subject to cultural
constraints, something that is predicted not to occur by the universal-
grammar model. I argue that these apparently disjointed facts about
the Pirahã language—gaps that are very surprising from just about any
grammarian’s perspective—ultimately derive from a single cultural
constraint in Pirahã, namely, the restriction of communication to the
immediate experience of the interlocutors,” states Everett.

Rethinking Linguistics
According to Everett, the deceptively simple language of the Pirahãs
is not an indicator of a mental failing— curiously, the tribe sees all
other languages to be quite ridiculous. While their language may seem
simple from our perspective, Everett says that they just use different
means to convey concepts and emotions. He states that the Pirahã have
a complex verbal morphology and system of accents that give the
language its expressive color. “The Pirahã people communicate almost
as much by singing, whistling, and humming as they do using consonants
and vowels,” he writes. Another surprising fact is the absence of
myth, ritual, symbolism or any other anthropological characteristic
that relates the Pirahãs with other cultures throughout history. For
the Pirahã, there does not exist any creator God, or moment of
creation; nothing was ever created because it always existed. Their
concept and experience of time reduces it to the absolute present. In
fact, there are no members of the community interested in tracking the
records of grandparents, much less older ancestors. To the Pirahã,
once something is outside of direct experience, it ceases to exist.
They don’t even seem to have any storytelling. With no color, no time,
and no need for recursive sentence structure, could it be that for the
Pirahã further detail would seem needlessly redundant? Or do these
concepts simply not fit into the Pirahã worldview? Everett says that
the Pirahã see other languages as laughable, and show no desire to
pursue “Portuguese (or American) knowledge but oppose its coming into
their lives. They ask questions about outside cultures largely for the
entertainment value of the answers.” Since various defenders of
Chomsky’s doctrine do not share Everett’s opinions, could the Pirahã
tribe simply represent a state of intellectual development that modern
linguistic laws fail to understand?

CROOKED HEAD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Spzjh9QgA
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto
The Interpreter : Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our
understanding of language?
BY John Colapinto / April 16, 2007

One morning last July, in the rain forest of northwestern Brazil, Dan
Everett, an American linguistics professor, and I stepped from the
pontoon of a Cessna floatplane onto the beach bordering the Maici
River, a narrow, sharply meandering tributary of the Amazon. On the
bank above us were some thirty people—short, dark-skinned men, women,
and children—some clutching bows and arrows, others with infants on
their hips. The people, members of a hunter-gatherer tribe called the
Pirahã, responded to the sight of Everett—a solidly built man of fifty-
five with a red beard and the booming voice of a former evangelical
minister—with a greeting that sounded like a profusion of exotic
songbirds, a melodic chattering scarcely discernible, to the
uninitiated, as human speech. Unrelated to any other extant tongue,
and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of
the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex
array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can
dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or
whistle conversations. It is a language so confounding to non-natives
that until Everett and his wife, Keren, arrived among the Pirahã, as
Christian missionaries, in the nineteen-seventies, no outsider had
succeeded in mastering it. Everett eventually abandoned Christianity,
but he and Keren have spent the past thirty years, on and off, living
with the tribe, and in that time they have learned Pirahã as no other
Westerners have. “Xaói hi gáísai xigíaihiabisaoaxái ti xabiíhai
hiatíihi xigío hoíhi,” Everett said in the tongue’s choppy staccato,
introducing me as someone who would be “staying for a short time” in
the village. The men and women answered in an echoing chorus, “Xaói hi
goó kaisigíaihí xapagáiso.” Everett turned to me. “They want to know
what you’re called in ‘crooked head.’”

“Crooked head” is the tribe’s term for any language that is not
Pirahã, and it is a clear pejorative. The Pirahã consider all forms of
human discourse other than their own to be laughably inferior, and
they are unique among Amazonian peoples in remaining monolingual. They
playfully tossed my name back and forth among themselves, altering it
slightly with each reiteration, until it became an unrecognizable
syllable. They never uttered it again, but instead gave me a lilting
Pirahã name: Kaaxáoi, that of a Pirahã man, from a village downriver,
whom they thought I resembled. “That’s completely consistent with my
main thesis about the tribe,” Everett told me later. “They reject
everything from outside their world. They just don’t want it, and it’s
been that way since the day the Brazilians first found them in this
jungle in the seventeen-hundreds.”

CONTACT
Daniel Everett
http://www.llc.ilstu.edu/dlevere/
email : dan.everett [at] man.ac [dot] uk

EVEN FURTHER
http://www.jstor.org/pss/539808
http://tps.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/9/2/149
'Katz, Fred and Marlene Dobkin de Rios (1971) Hallucinogenic Music: an
Analysis of the Role of Whistling in Peruvian Ayahuasca Healing
Sessions'

AMAZON HEALERS WHISTLING BIRDSONGS
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-26807295_ITM

"Norma, the vegetalista who so astonished me with her care, skill and
knowledge during my first ceremony two nights prior, had packed a big
bowl with a knot of the local Nicotina Rustica and had blown curling,
whistling smoke over a plastic liter bottle filled with an opaque
orangish liquid I knew to be ayahuasca, the potent brew of tryptamines
and MAO inhibitors that has been prepared in the Upper Amazon for
perhaps sixteen thousand years. I knew it to be ayahuasca, since I
had, after all, helped mix it the day before, pounding a kilo of the
soft woody vine of fresh B. Caapi liana and tossing about fifty green
glossy leaves of P. Viridis, a DMT-containing relative of coffee, into
the black cauldron simmering over a wood fire on the shores of the
Yanayacu River, one of the eleven hundred tributaries of the Amazon.
Back home this could be a felony. Here, I now understood, it's a
medicine.

The smoke whistle is a trope, a refrain that often begins or ends an
Icaro, one of the beautiful songs sung and whistled continuously
throughout the four-hour shamanic ayahuasca ceremony. The smoke and
its whistling inflection act as protocols to open up a spirit portal,
an active earth surface, while keeping unwelcome entities--what I
think of as affects--at bay. After my first session, I had also
learned that the songs serve to orient the ayahuasca drinker. The
songs mime and sample the birdsong of the region, an ecosystem with
over two thousand species of birds and the poly-rhythms of chatter
from over 500,000 insect species. I held onto and was held by the
Icaros, giving intense thanks for the whistled orientation.

Finding ayahuasca in Iquitos is not difficult. One does not need a
sense for occult locales to locate it--it is, according to
anthropologist Marlene Dobkin de Rios, an integral part of the
medicine of the region. But the pilgrim/tourist who seeks the
enlightenment of the yage way of knowledge has probably begun training
well before the departure gate. Or should have. For by all accounts,
ayahuasca (a potent admixture of various DMT and Monoxidase Inhibitor
containing plants found in the region) is hardly a recreational drink.
Like other ecodelics, ayahuasca can yield very different kinds of
journeys, depending on the "set and setting" of the tea drinker,
including programming offered by curanderos in the form of Icaros--the
rhythmic and often whistled songs that accompany and guide the tea
drinker on her journey. Anxious, even terrifying trips are not
uncommon, and unlike the legendary brown acid of Woodstock, it is
usually not the psychedelic agent that is the ultimate or even
proximate cause of the distress. The problem, the drinker discovers,
is the self, which must give way on its attachments if it is to abide
the massively parallel consciousness induced by ayahuasca. This
parallel consciousness is often presented as a multitude of entities
and forms for whom death is a transition but not a
destination--"Ayahuasca" means "vine of the dead" in Quechua, and is
sought out for its ability, among other things, to erode the very
distinction between the living and the dead. But to abide this
parallel presentation, an enormous flow of information not verifiable
in the serial time of the body, the pilgrim prepares the self for its
momentary disappearance through a culling of the self and its wants.
Each pilgrim begins with a regime of selective self-negation or
denial: the would be interdimensional traveler must fast prior to the
ayahuasca ceremony, or face the wrath of a possible inadvertent
serotonin crisis provoked by a piece of cheese or chocolate and their
MAOI ingredients."

CONTACT
Marlene Dobkin de Rios
http://www.marlenedobkinderios.com/
http://books.google.com/books?id=CWBqAAAAMAAJ
email : mderios [at] marlenedobkinderios [dot] com

PERUVIAN WHISTLING VESSELS
http://diseyes.lycaeum.org/fresh/vessels.htm
http://diseyes.lycaeum.org/fresh/peru795.htm
http://diseyes.lycaeum.org/fresh/donwri.htm
"Note: Peruvian whistling vessels are not musical instruments. They
are pre-Columbian artifacts which have recently been discovered to be
highly effective psychoacoustical instruments, capable of rapidly
inducing a profound, positive, beautiful, and beneficial altered state
of consciousness which lasts as long as the vessels are being blown."

WHISTLING BOTTLES
http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/yage.html
The acoustic component: the "Whistling Bottles"

"In a short article published in 1971, "Hallucinogenic Music," Marlene
Dobkin de Rios and Fred Katz attempt to argue that there is an
important acoustical component to the Yage ceremony. (Katz and de Rios
1971.) Certainly, others had noted the shaman's use of a schacapa or
rattle to mark important points in the ceremony. And other
ethnographers have noted that in other cultures, the use of drums or
other percussive instruments is part and parcel of the ceremony,
creating conditions of "sonic driving" which may help entrain
brainwaves. But de Rios points out that one of the most important
parts of the Yage folk music performed by the shaman was whistling -
the use of certain precise tones at different parts of the ceremony.
What significance did this have? She mentions the ancient Pythagorean
belief of musical effects on consciousness, with musical progressions
linked to states of mind, and the synaesthetic experience that some
hallucinogen users report between musical tones and color perceptions
or emotional experiences. And admits that even today, knowledge of
psychoacoustics (the neurological effects of music on the brain) is in
its infancy.

So while it could purely be a cultural component - i.e. the melody
creates certain folk associations on the part of the listener,
providing content for the visionary experience - she questions whether
a more direct effect might not be involved. The shaman would whistle,
she noted, to help bring a 'client' out of a 'bad trip' or negative
experience, or to assist the person with some transitional point in
the psychedelic visions. Certain tonic progressions would coincide
precisely with these transitions. She suggests, "...the preponderance
of the tone G could be viewed as the dominant tone away from the tonic
C. Perhaps this contrastive situation potentiates the activation of
the ayahuasca alkaloids..." De Rios seems to suggest that mostly oral
(i.e. non-instrumentally augmented) whistling was involved in the
ceremonies she saw, but this may not be universally the case. And this
musical component of the ceremony (the need to generate specific
whistling tones) may provide the clue to some mysterious Moche
artefacts - the so-called "whistling bottles."

These ceramics were made by pre-Columbian peoples living along the
coast of Peru between 500 BCE and up until the Spanish Conquest. They
were made primarily by the Moche craftsmen, but can also be found in
Chimu and other cultures. The vessels are generally dual-chambered:
one chamber is the "inside" of some type of effigy figure, and the
other chamber contains a spout. The two chambers are linked on the
exterior by a bridge handle which contains a whistling cavity, and an
inner cavity. Most archaeologists assume they are drinking vessels,
with their whistle being used as "an amusing vent to facilitate the
passage of air when pouring and filling with liquid." However, there
is some reason to believe that these curious artefacts were used for
more than just imbibing beverages. Daniel Statnekov, an amateur
collector, reported that when he blew into one of these whistling
vessels, it generated an eerie, high-pitched tone, and he had a sudden
feeling of perceiving himself as a moving luminescence rushing rapidly
through space, before he confronted an inky black cloud that chilled
him "like death" and suddenly forced him to snap out of his vision. He
had not used any drug prior to this experience - but it was
extraordinarily similar to that reported by yage users! (Statnekov
1987.)

Statnekov set out to prove scientifically that these "whistling
bottles" were not used primarily for drinking. He and acoustic
physicist Steven Garrett tested about seventy of the bottles, from
different cultures and time periods, using the following analysis:
pressurized air was sent through the bottles in an anechoic chamber,
and the resulting sound passed through a spectrum analyzer. Often as
many as seven partials, harmonics of the fundamental frequency, could
be detected. They found that the average frequency of the Moche/Huari
bottles was around 1320 Hz, whereas the Chimu/Chancay bottles averaged
a tone of about 2670 Hz. The earlier cultures tended to produce
"enclosed-type," dual-tone low-frequency whistles, where the second
tone could be achieved by halving the blowing pressure, creating a
tone about 0.65 of the original frequency. They concluded, "The
frequencies of a bottle produced by a specific set of cultures tend on
average to be within +/- 14% of the average frequency. On the basis of
the small octave range... we are reasonably sure they were not used as
musical instruments... however, the clustering of frequencies... in
the range of the ear's greatest sensitivity... and the high sound
levels produced by the whistles when blown orally... suggest they were
produced as whistles..." (Garrett and Statnekov 1987.)

So, they're not used as musical instruments, and people very likely
didn't hear very much when drinking from them, so they probably
weren't useful as ritual beverage containers either. What were they? I
suspect Statnekov's experience holds the key. The whistling bottles
may have peculiar psychoacoustic effects on their own when blown
orally. But more likely, as Dobkin de Rios suggested, such whistles
may have been used to potentiate and synergistically amplify the Yage
experience. They may have been used by Moche shamans to generate the
specific tonal sequences thought to be necessary for guiding the Yage
'trip.' After the conquest, shamans may have resorted to purely oral,
non-amplified or instrumentalized whistling as an alternative, which
is why de Rios didn't find such things in use among her subjects.
However, the manufacture of such vessels may not have stopped with the
Spanish Conquest; I suspect careful examination by ethnographers may
turn up their continued use in Yage ceremonies in the Andes today.
Their effects on consciousness require some more psychophysical
study."

FURTHER STILL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ9lSOaQCwg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJl-QNaa5iI

ORANGUTAN (SOMEHOW) LEARNS TO WHISTLE
http://www.greatapetrust.org/orangutan/index.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081211112004.htm
Orangutan's Spontaneous Whistling Opens New Chapter In Study Of
Evolution Of Speech / Dec. 12, 2008

Throughout history, human beings have used the whistle for everything
from hailing a cab to carrying a tune. Now, an orangutan’s spontaneous
whistling is providing scientists at Great Ape Trust of Iowa new
insights into the evolution of speech and learning. In a paper
published in December in Primates, an international journal of
primatology that provides a forum on all aspects of primates in
relation to humans and other animals, Great Ape Trust scientist Dr.
Serge Wich and his colleagues provide the first-ever documentation of
a primate mimicking a sound from another species without being
specifically trained to do so. Bonnie, a 30-year-old female orangutan
living at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington,
D.C., began whistling – a sound that is in a human’s, but not an
orangutan’s, repertoire – after hearing an animal caretaker make the
sound.

“This is important because it provides a mechanism to explain
documented between-population variation in sounds for wild
orangutans,” Wich said. “In addition, it counters a long-held
assumption that non-human primates have fairly fixed sound repertoires
that are not under voluntary control. Being able to learn new sounds
and use these voluntarily are also two important aspects of human
speech and these findings open up new avenues to study certain aspects
of human speech evolution in our closest relatives.” Previous studies
have indicated that orangutans and chimpanzees are capable of species-
atypical sounds and vocalizations, but only under the strong influence
of human training. Bonnie, however, was not explicitly trained to
whistle, according to Wich and his co-authors – Great Ape Trust
scientists Dr. Karyl Swartz and Dr. Rob Shumaker; Madeleine E. Hardus
and Adriano R. Lameira, doctoral candidates at the Utrecht University
in The Netherlands assigned to the Ketambe Research Center in Sumatra,
where Wich is research co-manager; and Erin Stromberg, an animal
caretaker at the National Zoo.

Scientists have long known that orangutans copy physical movements of
humans, but Bonnie’s whistling indicates that the learning capacities
of orangutans and other great apes in the auditory domain might be
more flexible than previously believed, Wich said. The behavior goes
against the argument that orangutans have no control over their
vocalizations and the sounds are purely emotional – that is, an
involuntary response to stimuli such as predators. Bonnie appears to
whistle for the sake of making a sound rather than to receive a food
reward or some other incentive. If asked to whistle, she is likely to
oblige, another indication to scientists that she makes the sound
voluntarily.

In their paper, Wich and his colleagues also shared anecdotal
information about Indah, a female orangutan who lived with Bonnie at
the National Zoo before moving to Great Ape Trust in 2004. Indah also
began to whistle some years after Bonnie was first observed making the
sound in the late 1980s, but Indah died before recordings could be
made of her whistles. Scientists believe that Indah’s whistling was a
vocalization learned from Bonnie. That compares with what scientists
assume about social learning in wild orangutan populations. For
example earlier work by Dr. van Schaik and colleagues showed that wild
orangutans in one population make a “raspberry” sound during nest-
making, while orangutans in another population make a “nest smack”
sound when engaged in the same activity. Wich said it’s unlikely that
purely genetic or ecological factors explain the differences in sounds
of different orangutan populations. Rather, it’s more likely others
copy one orangutan’s innovative sound because the sound serves a
function. “This is a very strong indication that different sounds
among wild populations are learned and are not purely genetically or
ecologically based,” Wich said. “This is a great indication that
orangutans can learn sounds not in their repertoire from another
species, and they are flexible in using them.”

The scientific investigation with Bonnie at the National Zoo was
supported in part by a grant from the David Bohnett Foundation and
complements field studies of wild orangutans, where differences have
been noted in the call repertoires between populations. A strength at
Great Ape Trust is the ability of its scientists to conduct
simultaneous studies on both captive orangutans and wild orangutans on
the Indonesian island of Sumatra at the Ketambe Research Center, where
Wich is research co-manager. “Bringing captive and field research
together is an unharvested field,” Wich said, “and it offers great
potential to Great Ape Trust.”

The research also builds on earlier investigations by ape language
pioneer Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh a scientist with special standing at
Great Ape Trust, and others on the ability of great apes to imitate
human speech. Specifically, Savage-Rumbaugh’s 1991 investigation
centered on whether the bonobo Kanzi, a member of the colony of
bonobos now living at Great Ape Trust, might have structurally
different vocalizations than bonobos in another group. In a 2004
study, Savage-Rumbaugh looked at whether Kanzi was attempting to
imitate human speech. The results of these studies did enlarge
scientists’ appreciation of the plasticity in primate sound and vocal
learning and indicated that primates might have some plasticity to
produce completely new sounds, Wich and his colleagues wrote. The new
findings reopen the door on such research. “One of the main things we
do not understand yet is the evolution of speech,” Wich said.

BONUS : BACK INTO THE LOOP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y