There was no sweeter and more enchanting moment in my childhood than going to my grandmother’s house, she always had the best stories and told us everything my mother did when she was young, obviously very different from how she told me. She also told us a lot about her own mother, her grandparents, her cousins and how different the city she lived in when she was a child was. Today, it is up to us to make those memories for our own children, and although we always thought it was something uniquely human, now science reveals to us that in the animal kingdom there are also others who do it, in particular the orangutans.
According to the newspaper El País, an investigation was carried out in the Sumatra jungle, hiding a person disguised as a tiger near a group of orangutans who were walking with their young. According to the information, as soon as they saw the danger, they took the stress bath and escaped with their little ones to the branches of a tree. Later, they began to “dialogue” with them, which made them think that they were warning them of the danger of returning to the area where they found the beast.
Josep Call, in charge of this investigation, shared with the newspaper that at first they thought they had failed since she did not say anything to her young, but later they saw that they were vocalizing and it was there that they understood what was happening.
“We know that these are vocalizations that they use in situations like this, for example, conflict. It clearly shows that they perceive him as a threat and yet they do not vocalize until he leaves, “shared the scientist from the University of St. Andrews.
This “scare” that they used to know what was happening with these apes was used 24 times and in seven different females, who again “explained” to their offspring what was happening, but not at the moment, but later, taking 7 minutes with babies and up to 20 minutes with older ones. “If the young does not matter, the age would have no effect, but the warnings come much earlier the smaller it is.”
Apparently, this had not happened before in any animal, more than in orangutanas, and they consider that this could be related to the fact that they spend up to 9 years with their children, something totally different from what happens with females of other species ( except human, obviously); Furthermore, they are almost always alone, without a group, which would lead them to learn about the dangers in another way, such as communicating.
“The other apes learn with more members of the group, seeing and interacting with them, which provides more opportunities to learn, which in the case of orangutans are more reduced,” they indicate. “ If the mother does not react to such a situation, the learning opportunities are reduced. So it would make sense that they would have developed a more powerful, more sophisticated learning capacity.”
Don’t you find this completely interesting? Me! Because now we know that we are not the only ones who communicate, and it is very likely that we will soon be surprised that there are animals that have this capacity, although it may not seem like it.