Baboon vocalizations contain five vowel-like sounds comparable to those of human speech

An acoustical analysis of the grunts, barks, wahoos, copulation calls, and yaks from baboons shows that, like people who use several vowels during speech, these nonhuman primates make five distinct vowel-like sounds, according to a study published January 11, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Louis-Jean Boƫ, Grenoble Alpes University, France, and colleagues.