Humans have vocal folds聲帶 very similar to those of apes人猿, but we can also precisely恰恰, 就是 control the shape塑造 and size of our vocal tract.聲道 For powerful high notes, soprano singers女高音 match the natural frequencies of the two.
But how to find out if gibbons長臂猿 can do the same? Give them some helium氦. Helium raises the natural frequency just of the vocal tract but not the vocal folds. In helium-huffing gibbons, calls stayed just as piercing because the animals tuned調整 their vocal tracts to match the higher frequencies. In short, gibbons sing soprano all the time.
It's not just a primate靈長類動物 party trick - this separation between the actual source of the sound and the mechanism of shaping it is something that biologists thought was a result of a long evolutionary process, leading to our finely-controlled speech. But it seems nature came up with the biological equipment for these techniques long before humans headed to the opera.
But how to find out if gibbons長臂猿 can do the same? Give them some helium氦. Helium raises the natural frequency just of the vocal tract but not the vocal folds. In helium-huffing gibbons, calls stayed just as piercing because the animals tuned調整 their vocal tracts to match the higher frequencies. In short, gibbons sing soprano all the time.
It's not just a primate靈長類動物 party trick - this separation between the actual source of the sound and the mechanism of shaping it is something that biologists thought was a result of a long evolutionary process, leading to our finely-controlled speech. But it seems nature came up with the biological equipment for these techniques long before humans headed to the opera.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2012/08/120824_witn_soprano_gibbons.shtml
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