Jackass penguins have the 'rules of language' that are ... human

The loud 'songs' of African jackass penguins were discovered to follow the extremely popular rules of human language.

African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) are nicknamed "jackass penguins" because they communicate through hiss, like a donkey. In a new study, researchers found that the 'language ' of jackass penguins actually follows the same basic language rules as we do.

In the study, published in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers recorded nearly 600 pronunciations from 28 adult male penguins living in the Italian zoo.

African penguins use three distinct types of sounds, reminiscent of human syllables.

In it males tend to pronounce a lot during mating, which is why researchers turn to this population. Scientists have known from previous research that African penguins use three distinct types of sounds, reminiscent of human syllables, to greet each other, mate or defend the territory. But researchers want to know if those "syllables" follow the two rules of common language.

One of those rules, called Zipf's concise law , was proposed in 1945 by linguist George Zipf. The law states that the more often a word is used in any language, the shorter it tends to be. Previous studies analyzed more than 1,000 languages ​​around the world to find evidence of Zipf law, and this rule holds all of them.

The next rule is called the Menzerath-Altmann law , the longer a word or phrase, the shorter the syllable its constituent, while the shorter words have the longer syllables. Previous studies have shown that non-human primates follow both rules when they communicate, but what about jackass penguins?

Researchers in the new study found that male penguins 'songs' fit the Zipf and Menzerath-Altmann rules: The shortest calls tend to be the most popular and the phrases The longest is made up of the shortest syllables. This study provided the first practical evidence that these popular language models extended into the animal kingdom.

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