Young lemurs sing like children, study reveals

Young Madagascan lemurs that sing, display similar characteristics and development patterns to young children, research has revealed.

A study by The University of Warwick found that young lemurs tend to sing out of tune before improving as adults, in a similar way to how humans also learn to control their singing voice.

The discovery was made after analysing the vocal patterns of the lemurs, which are also known as the indris, at different ages.

Dr Chiara De Gregorio, a postdoctoral researcher who led the study, said like humans, the indris each had their own voices and some would be better at singing than others.

The findings were revealed as a result of researchers being interested to find out if the same things that happen to the human voice also happened to "distant relatives", Dr De Gregorio added.

She said the characteristics that were similar between humans and the indris are called nonlinear phenomena (NLP) and included cracks, jumps in pitch, and rough, noisy sounds.

"In this analysis of 62 wild indris we found that young indris produce many more NLPs compared to their adult counterparts, suggesting that singing in tune is an ability that develops," Dr De Gregorio added.

The study also found there were singing differences between male and female indris.

The males sang with more roughness and instability than females, potentially because of differences in social roles.

The males use a type of irregular sound that can make them sound bigger and more intimidating.

The indris also demonstrated more "off-key elements" at the end of musical phrases, which the researchers said indicated the animals were vocally tired, in the same way human singers could get tired after a long performance.

Dr De Gregorio added her research had also led her to study the vocal patterns of orangutans.

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