Monday, February 20, 2012

Goat Accents

From LiveScience:
Goats don't have their own language, but they do seem able to pick up accents from one another, scientists found in a study of calls made by young goats.
The researchers say their results could have implications for our understanding of the evolution of vocal learning, or as it is known in humans, speech.  
The ability to learn a range of sounds and modify them according to the environment was thought to be reserved to a handful of animals, including some birds, whales, dolphins, bats, elephants, and the most extreme example, us.
The goat calls reveal these animals are capable of a rudimentary form of vocal learning, and they hint that similar abilities may have gone undetected elsewhere, according to researchers at Queen Mary University of London.
I'm trying to imagine goats with a Brooklyn accent (rude) or a Minnesota accent (nice).  If there is a goat-style Southern accent, it would probably make me think those goats were slower than the rest of the goats.

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