Orangutans Found to Produce Dual Sounds, Similar to Beatboxing
Orangutans have been found to make two separate sounds at the same time, a phenomenon known as biphonic call production, which researchers suggest is similar to human beatboxing. The calls involve consonant-like noises that coincide or overlap with vowel-like noises. The researchers recorded two different groups of wild orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra and heard apes making these calls. The researchers suggest that early human language may have resembled something that sounded more like beatboxing before evolution organized language into the consonant-vowel structure that we know today.