- “Bonnie appears to whistle for the sake of making a sound rather than to receive a food reward or some other incentive. If asked to whistle, she is likely to oblige, another indication to scientists that she makes the sound voluntarily. ”

- “Indah also began to whistle some years after Bonnie was first observed making the sound in the late 1980s, but Indah died before recordings could be made of her whistles. Scientists believe that Indah’s whistling was a vocalization learned from Bonnie. ”

- “wild orangutans in one population make a “raspberry” sound during nest-making, while orangutans in another population make a “nest smack” sound when engaged in the same activity. Wich said it’s unlikely that purely genetic or ecological factors explain the differences in sounds of different orangutan populations. Rather, it’s more likely others copy one orangutan’s innovative sound because the sound serves a function. ”

People are treating this like it’s a new discovery of an old fact. Why does no one ask if this is evolution happening in real-time? Surely it’s bound to happen sooner or later, and why shouldn’t we notice it, now that we’re aware of the possibility?

He sat down at his computer, pointed his guitar at the mic, and strummed the tune into the hard disk via a software program called SoundEdit (www.macromedia.com). He then compressed the file and converted it into a text-based binary code so it could travel over telephone wires to my computer in England a few seconds later. Here is a sample of what I received …

fHApE3hDHDmc@9,rqYMIhDcdYKcRIQ4E0Vrb6YLC2h-.

…not terribly auspicious you might think. Miles and miles of this stuff, like strands of DNA, entered my hard drive at speeds the ancients would find incomprehensible. It doesn’t immediately present itself as ambrosia for the spirit, does it? But then I decoded the file–using StuffIt Expander 4.0.2, a much-loved AppleMac utility–and played it through my copy of SoundEdit. Joy!

A Canadian voice was talking to me through my speaker: “Hi David. This is Johnny here. The tune goes something like this…”