Monkeys like to keep their chatter brief - just like humans

Monkeys like to keep their chatter brief - just like humans. Monkeys like to keep their conversations short and sweet very much like humans, experts revealed today.

British researchers studied the Formosan macaque of Taiwan, which has 35 different calls. They found that everyday chatter consisted of the shortest of these, while the longest calls only got an occasional airing.

Formosan macaque monkeys appear to use the law of brevity in their communication just like humans

In the same way our most commonly used words, such as 'a', 'the' and 'of', do not take long to say.

This phenomenon is known as the 'law of brevity' and could shed more light on the origins of human language,

Dr Stuart Semple, of Roehampton University, and his colleagues describe this discovery in a paper in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters.

The importance of keeping things brief cannot be under-estimated for these monkeys, who not only save energy by using shorter calls, but are also less likely to attract the unwanted attention of predators.

The new research adds to a growing number of studies indicating that monkey talk may not be as different from our own language as previously believed.

Dr Semple said: 'This work reveals a fundamental similarity between humans and monkeys in the way information is coded in their vocal communication.

'The law of brevity makes communication more efficient and this seems to hold across all languages.' ( dailymail.co.uk )