Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready

For four decades, the inability of nonhuman primates to produce human speech sounds has been claimed to stem from limitations in their vocal tract anatomy, a conclusion based on plaster casts made from the vocal tract of a monkey cadaver. We used x-ray videos to quantify vocal tract dynamics in living macaques during vocalization, facial displays, and feeding. We demonstrate that the macaque vocal tract could easily produce an adequate range of speech sounds to support spoken language, showing that previous techniques based on postmortem samples drastically underestimated primate vocal capabilities. Our findings imply that the evolution of human speech capabilities required neural changes rather than modifications of vocal anatomy. Macaques have a speech-ready vocal tract but lack a speech-ready brain to control it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/science/monkeys-speech.html

If you genetically alter primates to have more powerful brains, they might be able to tell you how well you did, unlike these mice:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/half-cells-mouses-brain-are-human-180953520/

huh, so we might have monkies talking with us in the near future. cool

Great, we're one step closer to Planet of the Apes.

BlueDingo said:
Great, we're one step closer to Planet of the Apes.

Yeah! Trust in Hollywood to tell us what we can and cannot do!

Oh boy, more animal experimentation parading as a scientific breakthrough for civilization!

I can't wait to hear what those recombinant dna monkeys have to say about their existence

"We need some non-human primate models," says Hideyuki Okano, a stem-cell biologist at Keio University in Tokyo. Human neuropsychiatric disorders can be particularly difficult to replicate in the simple nervous systems of mice, he says.

Previous attempts to genetically modify primates have relied on viral methods^{4, 5}, which create mutations efficiently, but at unpredictable locations and in uncontrolled numbers. Prospects for primates brightened with the emergence of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing system, which uses customizable snippets of RNA to guide the DNA-cutting enzyme Cas9 to the desired mutation site.

Huang and his team first tested the technology in a monkey cell line, disrupting each of three genes with 10–25% success. Encouraged, the scientists subsequently targeted the three genes simultaneously in more than 180 single-celled monkey embryos. Ten pregnancies resulted from 83 embryos that were implanted, one of which led to the birth of a pair with mutations in two genes: Ppar-γ, which helps to regulate metabolism, and Rag1, which is involved in healthy immune function.

titanmelon said:
Oh boy, more animal experimentation parading as a scientific breakthrough for civilization!

A scientific breakthrough isn't "for" anything. It's up to others to decide how knowledge gets used. I sense that you want to restrict the scientists. Bad call and futile.

titanmelon said:
I can't wait to hear what those recombinant dna monkeys have to say about their existence

They won't have anything to say, since uplifting mature monkeys instead of modifying the germline would be impossible or at least much harder. The fate of those particular monkeys is sealed.

Once we have smart (but not too smart) monkeys, we can finally re-introduce slavery! (and not feel too guilty about it)
As for me, I want a lusty monkey maid (and butler).

primate order:score

The foxp2 gene is implicated in language learning. Would be interesting to see if it really worked.