Late night host Conan O’ Brien remarked on the recent news that scientists have discovered the reason that women talk way more than men. Says our funny (male) host:  ‘They actually think that men are listening to them!‘

ha ha.

To our male TALK English Schools students:  well, of

All you do is talk, talk!

Well, of course Conan is right. Kind of.  About the first part. Probably the second too (it’s your loss, guys.) Whatever the language – English or Swahili, whatever the country – United States or Ecuador – women speak way more than men. In fact, the figure is 13,000 MORE words per day!

Now, a report in the Journal of Neuroscience, claims to have found the  reason that girls tend to talk earlier and use more complex language than boys do.

Using rats, they noticed that there are different levels of a certain protein in the brain, and it has a direct relationship to oral communication!

It’s a protein called Foxp2 and it has been shown to play a critical role in speech and language development in humans, as well as oral communication in birds and other mammals. In rats, the baby males are more vocal than females, and the males have higher levels of Foxp2.

McCarthy and colleagues measured the amount of Foxp2 in the brains of 4-day-old male and female rats. The male rat pups made more noise when separated from their mother and siblings than females did. The males made nearly twice as many calls over the five minutes spent apart from mom, who preferentially came and retrieved them.  And when the scientists suppressed the levels of Foxp2 in the males and boosted the levels in the females, the female pups made more distress calls than the males, and mama rat obeyed their call before the male rats.

McCarthy and colleagues measured the amount of Foxp2 in the brains of 4-day-old male and female rats. The male rat pups made more noise when separated from their mother and siblings than females did. The males made nearly twice as many calls over the five minutes spent apart from mom, who preferentially came and retrieved them.  And when the scientists suppressed the levels of Foxp2 in the males and boosted the levels in the females, the female pups made more distress calls than the males, and mama rat obeyed their call before the male rats.

Maybe our TALK English language students have noticed that there is indeed a  difference in how quickly male and female learn the language.  It would be interesting to have your comments!