Bonobos Exhibit Human-Like Language Structures in Groundbreaking Study

Kanzi the bonobo shattered boundaries between humans and apes

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives, and story summaries. Few apes have done more to unsettle human certainties than Kanzi the bonobo. He wasn’t the first nonhuman primate to use symbols to communicate, but he was the first to do so with such fluency, subtlety and apparent ease that it prompted uncomfortable questions about the supposed uniqueness of human language, cultu…

Bonobos create phrases in similar ways to humans, new study suggests

Tupac, a young male bonobo scratching his head. Lukas Bierhoff, Kokolopori Bonobo Research ProjectHumans can effortlessly talk about an infinite number of topics, from neuroscience to pink elephants, by combining words into sentences. This is thanks to compositionality: the ability to combine meaningful units into larger structures whose meaning is derived from the meaning of its units and the way they are combined. For years, scientists believe…

Bonobos’ calls may be the closest thing to animal language we’ve seen

300 aspects of each call were cataloged, letting researchers estimate meaning.

Scientists Listened To Bonobo Calls And Found Remarkable Similarities With Human Language

Bonobo communication uses non-trivial compositionality, which is pretty incredible.

Biology: Bonobos are close relatives of humans, along with chimpanzees. Their use of cries is unique among animals. A high-pitched scream in bonobos means so much…

Hoots and grunts from bonobos show signs of complex communication, researchers say

The peeps, hoots and grunts of wild bonobos, a species of great ape living in the African rainforest, can convey complex thoughts in a way that mirrors some elements of human language, a new study suggests.