What happens when linguistic tools used to analyze human language are applied to a conversation between a language-competent bonobo and a human? The findings, published this month in the Journal of ...

Bonobos—our closest living relatives—create complex and meaningful combinations of calls resembling the word combinations of humans. The study has investigated the vocal behavior of wild bonobos in ...

Wild bonobos – our closest living relatives – communicate using vocal calls organized in compositionally complex semantic structures that mirror key features of human language, according to a new ...

Babies sometimes laugh and sometimes cry. It doesn’t take a genius to decode the meaning of these sounds. But it isn’t quite as straightforward to decipher the meaning, if any, of an infant’s babbles.

The bonobo (Pan paniscus), humanity’s closest cousin, appears to communicate in a way scientists believed was exclusive to humans. Researchers from the University of Zürich and Harvard University said ...

Scientists have described the communications of chimpanzees and bonobos in new and unsurpassed detail, offering a lexicon for our closest living relatives and even a glimpse into the origins of human ...

Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work covers anything from archaeology and the environment to technology and culture. Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work ...

This month’s issue of Smithsonian magazine features a cover story by LEAP student fellow Lindsay Stern, Comparative Literature Ph.D. candidate and author of the novel The Study of Animal Languages.

If Christmas is about anything, it’s about the beauty of kids, from the poignancy of Bethlehem to the wonder of the tree. Teco is a 6-month-old bonobo chimpanzee, already crawling and walking way more ...

When Bill Fields began working with bonobo chimpanzees eight years ago, it wasn't just a new job. To start with, he became a single parent -- to a baby bonobo. Fields also gained an extended family -- ...