A new study published in iScience has found that male infants talk more than female infants in the first year. It is known that young babies emit a lot of squeals, vowel-like noises, growls, and brief word-like sounds. These 'protophones' or predecessors to speech, are gradually replaced by early words and, eventually, entire phrases and sentences. While some newborns are inherently more "talkative" than others, researchers have found that there are disparities in the amount of noises made by males and females.

While the research confirms earlier findings from a much smaller study by the same team, they still come as a surprise. That's because there's a common and long-held belief that females have a reliable advantage over males in language. They also have interesting implications for the evolutionary foundations of language, the researchers say.