A 25-year-old chimpanzee named “Panzee” has just demonstrated that speech perception is not a uniquely human trait.
Well-educated Panzee understands more than 130 English language words and even recognizes words in sine-wave form, a type of synthetic speech that reduces language to three whistle-like tones. This shows that she isn’t just responding to a particular person’s voice or emotions, but instead she is processing and perceiving speech as humans do.
