Orangutans Can ‘Beatbox’ — Could This Explain the Evolution of Speech?

Photo credit: Zac Mills, the Wildlife Collective

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Human beatboxers use their mouths and vocal cords to produce two sounds at once, mimicking the complex beats of hip-hop music. Researchers describe this ability as making “biphonations”. This impressive skill has been discovered in wild orangutans!

To produce a biphonic call combination, an animal must make a voiced and unvoiced noise at the same time. Humans use our lips, tongue, and jaw to make the unvoiced sounds of consonants. While we use our vocal folds in the larynx with exhaled air to make the open, voiced sounds of vowels.

Orangutans are capable of making these sounds and, importantly, can make both sounds at once. Female Sumatran orangutans produce “kiss squeaks” at the same time as “rolling calls” to alert others of a predator.

Male Bornean orangutans produce noises known as “chomps” in combination with “grumbles” in combative situations. Both of these examples resemble human beatboxing as they require the simultaneous exercise of two vocal sound sources.

This discovery suggests that the vocal abilities of orangutans and beatboxers may have existed in ancient, extinct relatives of humans. This could have influenced the development of human speech, and it is possible that early human language resembled something that sounded like beatboxing.

Reference: Adriano R Lameira, Madeleine E Hardus, Wild orangutans can simultaneously use two independent vocal sound sources similarly to songbirds and human beatboxers, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 6, June 2023, pgad182, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad182