{"id":909777,"date":"2026-09-26T01:26:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T01:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/909777\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T01:26:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T01:26:41","slug":"madagascan-lemurs-use-operatic-trick-to-hit-high-notes-new-research-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/909777\/","title":{"rendered":"Madagascan lemurs use operatic trick to hit high notes, new research finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"publish_date\">24 September 2026, 15:49 | Updated: 24 September 2026, 16:23<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"A new study on lemurs has revealed they use the same technique as opera singers.\" class=\"content-image\" data-image-catalogue-id=\"844407\" width=\"660\" height=\"370\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/844407.webp\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>    A new study on lemurs has revealed they use the same technique as opera singers.<\/p>\n<p>Picture:<br \/>\nAlamy<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/dialog\/share?href=www.classicfm.com%2Fmusic-news%2Flemurs-sing-opera-trick-high-notes%2F&amp;app_id=357357177653391\" target=\"_blank\" onclick=\"gusto.tracking.social(&#039;facebook&#039;, &#039;share&#039;)\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Facebook share\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790386000_189_facebook-share.png\"\/><br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst\">Researchers have found that lemurs use the \u2018formant tuning\u2019 technique taught to opera singers to reach the high notes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">That pretty tune you hear next time you\u2019re wandering through the rainforest, might not be as accidental as you think.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">It turns out that one type of lemur, native to Madagascar, uses the same technique as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classicfm.com\/discover-music\/periods-genres\/opera\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">opera<\/a> singers when they sing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Scientists from the universities of Warwick, Turin and Madagascar have been observing wild indri lemurs, and it turns out their mouth movements are coordinated with their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classicfm.com\/discover-music\/singer-vocal-ranges\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">vocal frequency<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">The researchers, whose work was published in the Journal of Computational Biology, looked at 83 video recordings of 19 wild indris and used motion-tracking technology to track their lip position. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Read more: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classicfm.com\/music-news\/lemurs-sing-with-rhythm-study\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lemurs can sing with rhythm just like us, new study finds<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790386001_852_image.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Indri lemurs use opera technique to sing<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Dr Chiara De Gregorio, honorary research fellow at the University of Warwick, said that they\u2019d observed \u201cthe kind of fine-tuned coordination between voice and body that we usually associate with trained human singers, not with a lemur singing from the forest canopy.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">She added: \u201cEvery time the pitch of an indri\u2019s song rose, we could see its mouth opening wider, frame by frame.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">This technique is known as formant tuning and is a technique used by professional singers to enhance their voices. Lemurs use it to enhance their long-distance communication in the dense forests of their native Madagascar. The researchers claim that this is the first demonstrable evidence of vocal-tract coordination in a non-human primate. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">The indri is a critically endangered primate whose existence is threatened by illegal hunting and habitat destruction. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph-text\">Other research earlier in the year found that siamang (a member of the gibbon family) singing has a layered structure, including separate \u201cvoices\u201d that can each be rhythmic and combine into a more complex pattern. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"24 September 2026, 15:49 | Updated: 24 September 2026, 16:23 A new study on lemurs has revealed they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-909777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}