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How to speak monkey: The language of cotton-top tamarins - Anne Savage

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TEDEd Animation

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The cotton-top tamarin is a very vocal monkey -- the species communicates using a sophisticated language of 38 distinct and grammatically structured calls! Anne Savage teaches a few of these chirps and whistles, taking us through a day in the life of Shakira the tamarin (using sounds pulled from the wild) as Shakira signals to her family, talks to her food and warns against potential predators.

Cotton-top tamarins use vocalizations in a variety of contexts. Can you describe a situation in which a cotton-top tamarin uses a vocalization to communicate information to another tamarin?

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Meet The Creators

  • Educator Anne Savage
  • Director Avi Ofer
  • Narrator Addison Anderson

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