Are humans the only one who can speak?

Humans are lucky to have got the gift of speech. Most of us use it every day without even giving a thought that why only humans can talk. We not only have a developed brain that processes and produce language, we can also make different types of sounds and voices. To make these sounds humans also use the same basic apparatus that the apes have: lungs, throat, voice box, tongue and lips. But why humans are the ones who can speak despite having so many similarities with other species? That is because from thousands of years, humans have more evolved with a longer throat and smaller mouth which is better suited for making sounds.

Humans have flexibility in the mouth, tongue and lips which lets us make a wide range of sounds that chimps can’t produce. The reason other primates can’t speak while humans can is because we’re able to consciously control our breathing.

But humans are not the only animal that can speak. They are not the only animals that can speak a human language. Parrots also speak the language of their owners and they use the language appropriately.

Almost every animal speaks. Every morning we hear beautiful sounds of the birds chirping. Each bird knows what the another is saying, and there are a hundred conversations going on at once. Birds constantly speak and communicate themselves by producing their own sounds. The Lyre bird of Australia can mimic the voice of almost anything it hears. They mimic even human voice. We can also notice the squirrels talking to one another as well. Even our beloved animals like cats and dogs, are also constantly talking. Dogs are probably extremely frustrated that we don’t understand their woofs and whimpers, because dogs have a lot to tell us. They can understand us, to a certain extent, but it's not quite the same without a two-way connection. Cats usually don't talk as much as dogs, but they do have a more complex language than dogs. They have different meows, growls, hisses, purrs, etc.

Once great white sharks fled to the region around the Neptune Islands just days after a group of killer whales killed a Great white shark. How did all those sharks get to know about the incident and left the area? They don’t have any news like us to get intimated. But somehow, they all got to know about the upcoming danger and all the great white sharks left the island. That means every animal has a voice of its own and we humans are not the only animals that can communicate.

Every living being on this planet has been gifted with their own kind of communication. But we humans think that we are the only animals who can speak. There are other ways of speaking than what we know and some of them are much more efficient than ours. So, humans aren't the world’s only animals that can talk. We just don't understand any spoken language but our own. Maybe that'll change with time.