Monkey see, monkey say?

Researchers taping carts of the putty-nosed monkey in the forests of Nigeria may have come a smart step closer to understanding the origin of human language. The researchers, who are from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, heard the monkeys string two alarm calls into a combined sound with a different meaning, as if forming a word. The monkeys have a "pyow" sound to call attention to leopards and a "hack" sound to warn of an eagle. Adult male monkeys in each group also make a "pyow-hack" car that prompts the group to leave an area. But Marc Hauser, an animal-communications expert at Harvard, advises caution before assuming the monkeys' combination of alarm calls is similar to the way in which humans form words. "Because there is no evidence that the calls are words or even word-like," Hauser says, "the connection to language is tenuous."