A University of Zurich-based team compared human baby talk with that of bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans:

For this, they meticulously recorded the vocalizations the infants of great apes were exposed to in the wild.

Their results show that, by far, humans are the most frequent “baby-talk” users. “We were surprised by how little of this type of communication we actually observed in our closest living relatives,” explains Franziska Wegdell, UZH postdoc and one of the three first authors of the study.

“Baby talk – a human superpower?,” June 25, 2025, Eurekalert

Their findings left them wondering how baby apes even learn communications skills: “It may be that, like humans, great apes also acquire aspects of their communication system socially but stemming from surrounding communication.”

Realistically, human languages are immensely more complex than ape ones.

Human baby talk is an intentional simplification: “Do you want to go play in the sandbox?” become “Go sandbox?” “You children must learn to play nicely with each other” becomes “Play nice!”

Perhaps:

Mom: “Play nice or we go home!”

Child: “No! Wah!”

Mom: No? Then play nice!

The child is learning both the existence and the importance of behavioral choices. She can also gradually learn the patterns of more conventional human speech by listening to others talk among themselves.

Apes probably don’t need to simplify their language as much because there just isn’t nearly as much to get across.

The paper is open-access.

You may also wish to read: Do humans and chimpanzees differ by only 1 percent? Of course not, but now that a more likely genetics figure has been published, some researchers are having a surprisingly hard time accepting it. 15%? Whew. Genetics makes a difference in how life forms look and act. So Crick and Watson, Collins and Venter and all the rest were onto something after all. Glad to hear it!