Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics have discovered that seals can control their voices, learn new sounds and have a sense of rhythm. Discovery is offered annually meeting American Acoustic Society.
The ability to learn to produce new sounds is critical to language development. Few animals have these characteristics, including humans, bats, whales, seals, and elephants. The authors of a new study have discovered that baby seals can not only learn new sounds, but can also change the pitch and pitch of their voices just like humans. The ability to change the voice is common, but changing the pitch or fundamental frequency is rare in animals.
The team also tested the seals’ ability to recognize rhythmic sounds using recordings of other seals. They changed some of these recordings, changed the tempo and added beats to see how the young seals would react. Seal puppies paid significantly more attention to recordings with regular rhythms and fast tempos, suggesting that they have a sense of rhythm.