Response to Lieberman on "Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready"

Sci Adv. 2017 Jul 7;3(7):e1701859. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1701859. eCollection 2017 Jul.

W Tecumseh Fitch^{1

2}, Bart de Boer³, Neil Mathur^{4

5}, Asif A Ghazanfar^{4

5

6}

¹ Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
² Haidlhof Research Station, University of Vienna/University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Bad Vöslau, Austria.
³ Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
⁴ Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
⁵ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
⁶ Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.

Abstract

Macaques do have a speech-ready vocal tract, but lack a speech-ready brain to control it.