Bindi Irwin opens up about the difficulties of celebrating her 18th birthday without her late father Steve modicanews,com

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She celebrated her big 18th birthday over the weekend at the world-famous Australian Zoo in Queensland. 

Now, Bindi Irwin has spoken about celebrating the special day without her Crocodile Hunter father, Steve.

During an interview with Entertainment Tonight, the Australian sweetheart admitted it was hard to enjoy the milestone without her dad but insisted she still feels him around. 

Heart breaking: Bindi Irwin has spoken out about celebrating her 18th birthday without her Crocodile Hunter father, Steve

‘It’s sad because you want him to be right next to you and experiencing all these milestones, but I truly believe that, in some way, he is still with us,’ she told.

‘I can feel that he’s not here anymore on most of the days that are really big for our family.

‘On days like birthdays, Christmases, it’s really a tough time because he’s not here,’ Bindi said.

Brave face: During an interview, the Australian sweetheart admitted it was hard to enjoy the milestone without her dad but she still feels him around

Missing him: She explained: ‘It’s sad because you want him to be right next to you and experiencing all these milestones, but I truly believe that, in some way, he is still with us’

On Sunday, the daughter of The Crocodile Hunter wrote a lengthy post on Instagram thanking her family for their unbreakable support and describing her late father as ‘a superhero for us all’.

The teen also looked ahead, saying she was excited about making a difference in the world. 

She shared an adorable family photograph of herself as a newborn baby being cuddled by her father and mother, Terri.

‘To be perfectly honest life has changed in a million ways since this photograph was taken,’ Bindi wrote. 

Family portrait: On Sunday, the daughter of The Crocodile Hunter wrote a lengthy post on Instagram thanking her family for their unbreakable support and describing her late father as ‘a superhero for us all’

Support team: She wrote: ‘To be perfectly honest life has changed in a million ways since this photograph was taken….Our Dad, Mum’s soulmate and a superhero for us all, passed away’

‘Along the way we gained another incredible part of our family, my brother Robert. Our Dad, Mum’s soulmate and a superhero for us all, passed away. 

‘However, since this photo was taken, 18 years ago, one life ingredient has remained, unchanged, unbreakable.   

‘That is the unconditional love that is shared between my beautiful little family and the loyalty we have to each other and everyone else who has taken this journey with us. 

‘I know that I am endlessly grateful for the love and light I have been given since Day 1 of my life.’ 

Looking forward: The 18-year-old said she was not able to predict what life had in store for her 

Mother-daughter bond: She also thanked her mother Terri (pictured) for all her love and support 

The 18-year-old said she was not able to predict what life had in store for her.

She posted another picture of her cuddling a tiger cub, saying: ‘I have so much happiness in my heart for the journey to come.

‘Being 18 and embarking upon my adult years, I can’t predict what life will have in store for me. All I know is that I will try my very best to make a difference in this world with each moment that I’m given.’

Significant: 2016 marks a significant and sad year for the Irwin family (Bindi pictured with her mother Terri and her younger brother Robert)

‘I will continue to carry on all the work that dad’s started’: Ten years ago, Bindi’s father died tragically at the age of 44, after being struck in the heart by a stingray

She thanked all those people who had supported her and her family through her formative years. 

‘Life is constantly evolving and I’m determined to find the light and love around every corner and share this with everyone who is a part of my story,’ she said.

‘Thank you so much to every single soul who took the time to read these last two posts, it means so much. I can’t wait to see what is yet to come.’

It has been 10 years since Steve passed away aged 44 in 2006 after being stabbed by a stingray while filming a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in far north Queensland.  

Family bond: The teen (pictured with her mother and brother) will be marking her milestone birthday with a ‘camping with the stars’ theme party at Australia Zoo

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The great ape that can talk like a human: Remarkable ability of 8-year-old orangutan Rocky could shed light on origins of speech modicanews,com

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The key to understanding how speech evolved could be found in an unusual place – an orangutan called Rocky.

The eight-year-old ape played an imitation game with researchers, copying the tone and pitch of the vowel-like calls they made.

The scientists discovered the sounds were different to any known noises made by orangutans in the wild, showing for the first time that the animals can learn new sounds and mimic human voices.

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During the study, a researcher made random sounds, varying the tone or pitch of her voice. Rocky then mimicked the sounds, which the team compared against a database of orang-utan calls 

HOW THE STUDY WORKED 

Rocky was studied at Indianapolis Zoo, Indiana, where he still lives, between April and May 2012, and all steps were taken to ensure his routine and environment were not disrupted.

During the study, a researcher made random sounds, varying the tone or pitch of her voice.

Rocky then mimicked the sounds, which the team compared against a database of orang-utan calls, collected form over 12,000 hours of observations of more than 120 orangutans from 15 wild and captive populations.

The sounds made by Rocky were different to the sounds on the database, showing that he was able to learn new sounds and control the action of his voice in a ‘conversational’ context.

The discovery, led by Dr Adriano Lameira from Durham University, shows orangutans could have the ability to control their voices.

This research might answer the question of whether spoken language came from early human ancestors.

‘It’s not clear how spoken language evolved from the communication systems of the ancestral great apes,’ said Dr Lameira.

‘Instead of learning new sounds, it has been presumed that sounds made by great apes are driven by arousal over which they have no control, but our research proves that orangutans have the potential capacity to control the action of their voices’

Before now it has been thought great apes, our closest living relatives, could not learn new sounds.

Because speech is a learned behaviour, it was thought our speech could not have originated from them.

The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Rocky was studied at Indianapolis Zoo, Indiana, where he still lives, between April and May 2012, and all steps were taken to ensure his routine and environment were not disrupted.

Rocky was studied at Indianapolis Zoo, Indiana, where he still lives

During the study, a researcher made random sounds, varying the tone or pitch of her voice.

Rocky then mimicked the sounds, which the team compared against a database of orangutan calls, collected from over 12,000 hours of observations of more than 120 orangutans from 15 wild and captive populations.

The sounds made by Rocky were different to the sounds on the database. 

This shows that he was able to learn new sounds and control the action of his voice in a ‘conversational’ context.

Dr Lameira said: ‘This indicates that the voice control shown by humans could derive from an evolutionary ancestor with similar voice control capacities as those found in orangutans and in all great apes more generally.

‘This opens up the potential for us to learn more about the vocal capacities of early hominids that lived before the split between the orangutan and human lineages to see how the vocal system evolved towards full-blown speech in humans.’ 

These findings build upon a previous study led by Dr Lameira when he was based at the University of Amsterdam.

In that study, published in January 2015, it was reported that a female orangutan called Tilda at Cologne Zoo, in Germany, was able to make sounds comparable to human consonant and vowel-like calls at the same rhythm and pace as human speech.  

THE SOUNDS OF ANIMALS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES 

Most languages use words similar to the English ‘moo’ for a cow noise. German ‘muh’, French ‘meuh’, Spanish ‘mu’, and Japanese ‘mō mō’

The ‘translation’ of animal sounds into human speech is similar across many languages for certain animal sounds, according to a blog by Oxford Dictionaries.

In English, a cat makes a ‘meow’, in German it is ‘miau’, in French ‘miaou’, in Spanish ‘miau’, and in Chinese ‘miāo’.

The translations are not identical, but they all use the same sound.

The same is the case for cows. Most languages use words similar to the English ‘moo’ – German ‘muh’, French ‘meuh’, Spanish ‘mu’, and Japanese ‘mō mō’.

It is the sound quality of the letter ‘m’ that mirrors the sound produced by both cats and cows and what we tend to associate with them.

But the sound of a rooster, for example, is more varied across languages.

‘In English we would say ‘cock a doodle doo’ which quite frankly sounds more melodic than any sound a rooster could ever produce,’ the blog says.

But the Germans use a word that is shorter than in English, ‘kikeriki’. A French rooster says ‘cocorico’ and an Arabic-speaking one will sound something like ‘kuku-kookoo’.

The vowels differ in these examples, but all of them contain a ‘k’ sound.

Another example where this is the case is the different words for the sound of a duck, ‘quack’ in English, ‘coin coin’ in French, ‘cua cua’ in Spanish.

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