Tonal languages require humidity

The weather impacts not only upon our mood but also our voice. An international research team including scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Psycholinguistics, Evolutionary Anthropology and Mathematics in the Sciences ...

Pitch range produced by vocal cords

Picture a singer, accompanied by a grand piano. As the singer's voice dances through multiple octaves of range, the pianist's fingers trip from one end of the keyboard to the other. Both the singer's voice and the piano are ...

Scientists: Lions and tigers roar a bit like babies cry

When lions and tigers roar loudly and deeply – terrifying every creature within earshot – they are somewhat like human babies crying for attention, although their voices are much deeper.

Toothed whales catch food in the deep using vocal fry register

Dolphins and other toothed whales are large brained top predators that captivate our imagination; they are extremely social, they cooperate, and can hunt prey down to 2 km deep in complete darkness with echolocation.

Why the human voice is so versatile

Macaques and baboons – two distantly related primates – are able to produce a similar range of voice-like sounds to humans.

Simplified voice box enriches human speech

An ongoing debate among scientists, on why chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates cannot speak or sing like humans, has focused mainly on evolutionary changes in human brain development. Attention has now expanded to anatomical ...

A common mechanism for human and bird sound production

When birds and humans sing it sounds completely different, but now new research reported in the journal Nature Communications shows that the very same physical mechanisms are at play when a bird sings and a human speaks.

page 1 from 3