By Meghan Rosen
Sukari the gorilla can grunt. She can hum. She can grumble. Now, scientists report, the gorilla’s got a new way to express herself. Sukari can “snough.”
She and other zoo gorillas make the noise, a cross between a sneeze and a cough, when zookeepers with food are near. The unusual utterance, which has not been observed in the wild and never been described before in this species, can help the gorillas grab people’s attention, says primatologist Roberta Salmi of the University of Georgia in Athens. The snough adds to the small but growing pile of evidence that captive apes can produce novel vocal sounds, Salmi and her colleagues report August 10 in PLOS ONE.