Simplification of larynx let humans have excellent pitch control with long and stable speech sounds
“Vocal membranes allow other primates to make louder, higher-pitched calls than humans – but they make voice breaks and noisy vocal irregularity more common,” said evolutionary biologist and study co-author W Tecumseh Fitch of the University of Vienna.
Only living species were included in the study because these soft tissues are not apt to be preserved in fossils. This also means it is unclear when the changes took place. The researchers studied laryngeal anatomy in apes including chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons, as well as Old World monkeys including macaques, guenons, baboons and mandrills and New World monkeys including capuchins, tamarins, marmosets and titis.
Sound production mechanisms in people and nonhuman primates are similar, with air from the lungs driving oscillations of the vocal cords. Acoustical energy generated this way then passes through the pharyngeal, oral and nasal cavities and emerges in a form governed by the filtering of specific frequencies dictated by the vocal tract.
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