These Lemurs Have a Haunting Call and May Use Vocal Tricks Similar to Opera Singers
Learn more about the wild indri, a lemur whose haunting call is produced by the same vocal movements as an opera singer.
Indri lemurs, also known as the 'singing lemurs,' inhabit the rainforests of Madagascar and are famous for their haunting high-pitched calls. A recent study published in PLOS Computational Biology reveals that these lemurs employ vocal techniques similar to trained human opera singers. When an indri's song pitch increases, the researchers observed the animal's mouth opening wider in consecutive frames, according to the study's corresponding author Chiara De Gregorio, an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Warwick.
This fine-tuned coordination between vocalization and body movement is akin to the formant tuning technique used by opera singers, where widening the mouth helps align the vocal tract's resonant frequencies with the voice's harmonics, amplifying the sound. The study analyzed 83 video recordings of 19 wild indris, combining audio with markerless motion-tracking technology to track the lemurs' mouth movements while singing.
The researchers believe the similar vocal techniques between humans and indri may have evolved independently through a process known as convergent evolution.
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