Natural History Wanderings

Mongabay  reported

Bonobos, one of humanity’s closest relatives, appear to string together vocal calls in ways that mirror a key feature of the human language, a new study carried out in the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has found.

While bonobos (Pan paniscus) produce grunts, peeps, whistles and hoots, they also combine these calls to create new meanings, researchers found, suggesting they may share a trait once deemed uniquely human: a complex language structure called nontrivial compositionality.

Read more  Bonobos combine calls in ways that resemble human language, study finds