Photo via Bruce McAdams/Flickr
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So that's the lemur obiviously. Here's the human speech played backward.
So, the human speech doesn't sound normal, but lemurs sort of sound terrifying. Were these babies rightfully terrified? Or did they want to join the ranks of lemurs? And amongst lemurs, which do babies prefer?If you have a baby, here are some videos to try out:These ring-tailed lemurs sound like fairly obnoxious people in a horrible choir:The Indri lemur sounds like a clarinet being mangled:These red-ruffled lemurs sound like a broken-down car trying to turn over and look like Martin Van Buren if he was a dog:These are the blue-eyed black lemurs that make unsettling alien sounds. You can’t really blame babies for paying attention to them. Also they (the lemurs) look like adorable monsters:The kicker for this study was reported by NBC, which noted that, “a second study at this lab is investigating whether babies can retain their ability to engage with lemur calls and human voices, if their parents play them the lemur calls at bedtime every day.” We can only hope that this bridges the species gap.