这只名叫邦妮的猩猩也会吹口哨，它会将嘴唇并拢在一起并发出哨音。
据美国《科学》杂志在线新闻报道，虽然灵长类动物经过训练能够学会这样的发声法，但邦妮却是第一只无师自通的猩猩——这只生活在美国华盛顿哥伦比亚特区史密森国家动物园中的猩猩，在饲养员的暗示下，自己学会了吹口哨。这一发现表明，类人猿的模仿本领可能比之前的认识更为强大，它甚至为研究人类语言的进化提供了帮助。研究人员在2008年12月出版的《灵长类》杂志上报告了这一发现。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Primates， doi：10.1007/s10329-008-0117-y，Serge A. Wich，Robert W. Shumaker
A case of spontaneous acquisition of a human sound by an orangutan
Serge A. Wich1, 2 , Karyl B. Swartz1, 3, Madeleine E. Hardus2, Adriano R. Lameira2, Erin Stromberg3 and Robert W. Shumaker1, 3
(1)Great Ape Trust of Iowa, 4200 SE 44th Ave, Des Moines, IA 50320, USA
(2)Research Group Behavioural Biology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, PO Box 80086, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands
(3)Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park, 3001 Connecticut Ave, NW Washington, DC 20008, USA
Abstract The capacity of nonhuman primates to actively modify the acoustic structure of existing sounds or vocalizations in their repertoire appears limited. Several studies have reported population or community differences in the acoustical structure of nonhuman primate long distance calls and have suggested vocal learning as a mechanism for explaining such variation. In addition, recent studies on great apes have indicated that there are repertoire differences between populations. Some populations have sounds in their repertoire that others have not. These differences have also been suggested to be the result of vocal learning. On yet another level great apes can, after extensive human training, also learn some species atypical vocalizations. Here we show a new aspect of great ape vocal learning by providing data that an orangutan has spontaneously (without any training) acquired a human whistle and can modulate the duration and number of whistles to copy a human model. This might indicate that the learning capacities of great apes in the auditory domain might be more flexible than hitherto assumed.
