Vernes, S. C. (2017). What bats have to say about speech and language.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1), 111–117.
Abstract
Understanding the biological foundations of language is vital to gaining
insight into how the capacity for language may have evolved in humans.
Animal models can be exploited to learn about the biological underpinnings
of shared human traits, and although no other animals display speech or
language, a range of behaviors found throughout the animal kingdom are
relevant to speech and spoken language. To date, such investigations have
been dominated by studies of our closest primate relatives searching for
shared traits, or more distantly related species that are sophisticated
vocal communicators, like songbirds. Herein I make the case for turning our
attention to the Chiropterans, to shed new light on the biological encoding
and evolution of human language-relevant traits. Bats employ complex
vocalizations to facilitate navigation as well as social interactions, and
are exquisitely tuned to acoustic information. Furthermore, bats display
behaviors such as vocal learning and vocal turn-taking that are directly
pertinent for human spoken language. Emerging technologies are now allowing
the study of bat vocal communication, from the behavioral to the
neurobiological and molecular level. Although it is clear that no single
animal model can reflect the complexity of human language, by comparing
such findings across diverse species we can identify the shared biological
mechanisms likely to have influenced the evolution of human language.
