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6 days ago
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Animals are talking — will the legal system listen?
The character of Dr. Dolittle, who "walks with the animals, talks with the animals," was the central figure in an early 20th century series of children's books written by Hugh Lofting, acting as a kind of personal antidote to his trauma of experiencing the worst of humanity in the trenches of World War I. "A fox has his rights, the same as you and I have," the eponymous physician-turned-animal doctor said in one book. But Dr. Doolittle is eccentric and, of course, fiction. Increasingly, however, talking with the animals is becoming less of a fantasy. This doesn't just invite some fantastic conversations, but recontexualizes the rights we allot to non-human creatures. The past decade has brought a slew of new findings that are changing our understanding of animal consciousness and communication. A new study on complex communication in chimps and another about bonobos' surprising language abilities, and recent findings about how sperm whale communication works, all suggest some animals have complex communication abilities that actually resemble human language in important ways. As AI and bioacoustics, as well as other clever new techniques, bring us ever closer to talking with animals or at least listening in on their conversations — should we prepare to update the way legal systems deal with animals? "Compositionality, in a nutshell: It's the fact that we can combine meaningful units into larger structures whose meaning is derived from the meaning of the units," Mélissa Berthet, a researcher in primatologist and linguistics at the University of Zurich, who studied bonobos in Democratic Republic of Congo (they are only found in the wild in forests in DRC, south of the Congo river) over an 8-month period, explained to Salon in a video interview. Combining units of language in meaningful ways is one of the hallmarks of what human language does, and it's evidence of this in a number of animals that suggests we might not be able to use signs of language as a filter to separate humans, who get certain rights, from animals, who don't. The University of Zurich team observed a group of bonobos from a project by local biologists that had habituated the animals over 10 to 15 years, depending on the group. This meant that the animals were used to having humans around them, but Berthet's group, like the local scientists, avoided interfering with their behavior and did their best to avoid any disturbance. With this work, the hope is that the animals use essentially the same "dictionary" as they would use if there were no humans present. "I really think the meaning is not really impacted," Berthet said, though she allows that they may perhaps talk — gossip? — about humans more than they would otherwise do. There are two kinds of compositionality. In the first, and most common, individual units (like words, for humans), are combined to produce meaning. This is called trivial compositionality, and it has been observed in animals in the past. In the second kind, thought to only exist in humans, when you put two units together, the meaning of one unit will modify the meaning of the other. For example, in the phrase "a blue dress," the word blue has actually modified the word dress, giving it a different meaning than it had before. This kind is called non-trivial compositionality, and it allows us to create complex utterances. "So far, it was thought that in animals, when they could do compositionally, it was mostly restricted to trivial compositionally ... we wanted to see whether bonobos had compositionally, whether it was something that was common in their vocal system. So here we took an approach that is a bit different from former studies, because usually people would investigate one combination, and here we managed to investigated all the combinations of their vocal system." This was possible, Berthet said, because they succeeded in adapting a linguistic method used in humans to the study of animal communications. "The idea was to see whether compositionally in other species can be as extensive as in humans. Because, like I said, humans use compositionally all the time. We create very long sentences. And so we did it with bonobos. And what was interesting is that we found that four of their combinations are compositional, and all the core types that they have, so all the units can be combined in a compositional structure. So it's basically like all their words can occur in sentences, just like in humans, we can put any words in a sentence, and they can really do the same. And so for us, this is really amazing, because it shows that even though they have a very limited vocabulary, they can really use them and combine them extensively," Berthet explained. But it got better. "Among those four combinations that were compositional," Berthet went on, "we found that three of them were non-trivial. And again, this is very big, because for us, it's the first time that we really managed to show that animals can have non-trivial compositionality. So I think what it really means, in general, is that, first, humans are not the only species that can do non-trivial compositionally. Second, other animals can also use compositionally a lot. It's not just about one combination in their own system, that could be a coincidence." All this suggests that the last common ancestor of chimpanzees, bonobos and humans likely also produced compositional structures. "Compositionality is very common in human language. We use it all the time, and for some people, it's really a hallmark of human language. And there are some species that do a bit of compositionality, but it's always very limited," said Berthet. The finding that among combination types, four are compositional, means they can convey information in a flexible way just like us. "So it's basically like all their words can occur in sentences, just like in humans, we can put any words in a sentence, and they can really do the same." We have indeed known for a while that whales are intelligent creatures, with their own eerie and complex form of sound-based communication. Since the 1970s, humans have been entranced by the songs of humpback whales, for example. But another kind of whale communication, among the very social if less musical sperm whales, has more recently become a focus of research into exactly how whale communication, or language, might work. Sperm whales use a series of clicks, called codas, to communicate. Until last year, though, we couldn't really say how this form of communication — distinctly different, even alien, to our own — actually works to convey information. We had already used machine intelligence to analyze the codas, recorded using bioacoustics, and determined that both the clicks and the intervals between clicks are important. The question has been, though, how can a system of clicks and spaces, with some 150 individual coda types, defined by their characteristic sequences of inter-click intervals found globally (with different clans or groups of whales using a far smaller number), account for the social and behavioral complexity seen in these animals? Surely there must be some other factor dividing up the use of different codas to allow for more complex ways to combine them? In recent years, our technological ability to listen in on whales has grown in leaps and bounds. So too, as a result, has our understanding of their unique forms of communication, which turns out, in the sperm whale at least, to be structured, complex, and expressive. Last year, a group of researchers applied machine learning to the largest existing data set of sperm whale codas, from The Dominica Sperm Whale Project, to demonstrate that sperm whale codas can be sensitive to how they are used — that is, the context created by surrounding codas may change a given coda's intended meaning, just the way words in human sentences create a context that indicate, or change, the intended meaning of a given word. And they also showed that sperm whale codas are indeed combinatorial, similar to the compositionally shown by bonobos and chimps. The researchers, members of Project CETI, used 8719 codas recorded over 13 years ending in 2018 from the Eastern Caribbean 1 (EC-1) clan, a group of 400 sperm whales. Clans are known to have their own culture, developing unique behaviors and repertoires of coda types. Over those years, Dominica Sperm Whale Project researchers manually recorded codas, while over the last four, Project CETI scientists studied EC-1's coda repertoire using aerial drones, small computers attached by suction cups (called D-tags or acoustic biologging tags), synced underwater microphones in their hundreds, and swimming robots. The data collected in this way was then analyzed using machine learning, allowing for the sort of complex analysis needed to find patterns indiscernible to the human ear, and in no way similar to what we might expect from our knowledge of human or even primate communication. "When analysing codas exchanged between whales, we observe fine-grained modulation of inter-click intervals relative to preceding codas, as well as modification of standard coda types via the addition of an extra click. We term these contextual features rubato and ornamentation. Next, we show that the coda repertoire has combinatorial structure: in addition to rubato and ornamentation, codas' rhythms and tempos can independently be discretised into a small number of categories or types," the researchers wrote in Nature Communications this time last year. Essentially, these different features allow for coda repertoire to act as a kind of phonetic alphabet. Project CETI doesn't actually aim to talk with whales, but to listen in and translate what they're saying — ideally with permission, if they reach a point where they can understand if permission is given or withheld. The project itself is a non-profit organization funded by partners that include Amazon Web Services, Google Research, and the MOTH (More-Than-Human-Life) Program at NYU Law, which advises on the ethics and permission part, as well as universities in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and, notably, given some of the technology involved, in Israel. "We show that all four features are sensed and acted upon by participants in the vocal exchanges, and thus constitute deliberate components of the whale communication system rather than unconscious variation. Rhythm, tempo, rubato and ornamentation can be freely combined, together enabling whales to systematically synthesize an enormous repertoire of distinguishable codas," they explain. The whales could put together long, finely detailed sequences of all of these features. Catherine Crockford, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, an author of the new study, sees this combinatorial system as perhaps representing a transitional or intermediate phase between animal calls and language as seen in humans. Whether the chimps' bigrams should be considered like human units of communication, similar to words, or simple phrases that can be combined in longer sentences, or even like the ideograms used in some human writing is, Crockford told Salon in an email interview, the million-dollar question. 'They do differ from words and sentences, but exactly how they differ is what we are trying to figure out — and involves knotty philosophical issues, like are the signals fully arbitrary, like words are; are they intentionally produced to convey a specific message to others; are they learned; what meaning is really conveyed — these are all questions several teams of scientists are trying to address in animals,' she said. But complex communication involving compositional structures and even a degree of syntax (or word order that plays a role in determining meaning, as in human language) isn't just a mammal thing. Just as we've had to gradually acknowledge that it's not only humans, then not only primates, that are capable of complex "sentence" structures that flexibly convey meaning — whether this represents something like a transitional evolutionary phase between animal calls and human-type language, or something complex and sophisticated enough to be considered a language of its own — we now have to further expand our understanding. As it turns out, the only living descendants of the dinosaurs also seem to combine in complex ways to produce an array of meanings. Among birds, the Japanese tit offers the first experimental evidence for compositional syntax in any non-human species. Meanwhile, the southern pied babbler does not, in fact, merely babble. By playing back so-called "mobbing sequences", combinations of calls by which the birds seem to recruit other group members in response to danger and watching the reaction, scientists were able determine that the combination of two calls used for other purposes communicates information about the context — danger — and the requested action — "let's get together and fight" — in a form of rudimentary compositionally. These findings of two birds that combine individual "alarm" and "recruitment" calls to express a more complex idea using the two idea units suggests that syntax may in fact be more widespread than we thought. This, Crockford said, is the most fascinating question. 'Chimps are highly social and intelligent. They have close friends and family that they like to spend the day with and nest together with at night. But they live in dense forest where it's incredibly easy to lose each other without using sound. So their calls have become quite context-specific to firstly, tell others what they are doing: 'I'm resting', 'I'm travelling', so others know how to find them. Then they have specific calls to recruit others — to help in a hunt, to join them at food, to help them chase off a leopard or nasty neighbours — each call different. Then they have a bunch of specific calls they give when interacting with others to keep the interaction going longer, such as laughing during play, or teeth clacking during grooming,' Crockford said. And as they work on those bigrams, the researchers are beginning to understand call combinations. 'It seems they can combine two meanings together into an utterance, for example, 'rest' and 'food', which may translate into something like 'I'm staying longer at this food patch'. Telling others what you are doing, helps others decide if they want to stay and do it with you or move on. Such utterances probably mainly help bond partners to coordinate their activities in the dense forest vegetation so that they can stay together for longer,' Crockford added. By contrast, Berthet notes that bonobo communication focuses mostly on getting the group together. This makes sense, as the highly social, matriarchal primates live in fission-fusion societies, which means that they split up into smaller groups to forage during the day, then get back together again as a larger group. And whales? We don't know enough yet to say, but they seem to be gossips, the matriarchal and matrilineal society of sperm whales apparently consisting of a bunch of yentas who chit-chat all day long, talking over each other about anything and nothing for the sake of being together, while the adult men, though stereotyped as loners, may hang out together, perhaps sharing their own feelings with close friends, on the high seas. Shane Gero, the Canadian whale biologist who founded the Dominica Sperm Whale Project twenty years ago and is now biology lead for Project CETI, told NPR last year that 'it's hard not to see cousins playing while chatting … to not see moms hand over to a babysitter and exchange a few words before walking out the door, so to speak, to go eat in the deep ocean." The structures that determine our relationships with animals and their status in relation to humans were all developed many years before we understood just how much some of them are like us. Like us, that is, in areas that have historically been important in determining these things among humans, such as showing compassion for our fellows, cooperation, strategic use of tools, culture and language. We might also note that plenty of research in human psychology — not to mention our apparent failure as a species to sustainably manage the ecosystems that in turn sustain us and all life on Earth — has demonstrated that our own claims to rationality and consciousness are, well, less impressive than previously advertised. As Anne Benvenuti, a professor emerita of Psychology and Philosophy at Cerro Coso Community College in California, put it in a 2016 paper in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, "While convergent research on animal cognition, emotion, and behavior has increasingly pointed in the direction of animal 'personhood,' interdisciplinary research in human cognition has simultaneously confirmed Sigmund Freud's hypothesis that not only are human beings not always self-aware and rational, but also the human unconscious mind motivates much of human behavior; and that human consciousness is fragmented at best." Language is a big part of this. Back in the 1870s, Oxford professor Friedrich Max Müller argued that "there is between the whole animal kingdom on the one side, and man, even in his lowest state, on the other, a barrier which no animal has ever crossed, and that barrier is —language." The lack of flexible and open-ended communication, which occurs by means of combinatorial structures or compositionality that allows us to put just about any idea into language, was seen as the great barrier. Increasingly, this barrier is being eroded. We still don't have evidence that bonobos want to be able to inherit property or that political participation is important to sperm whales. But we now know that many animals use complex communication systems that allow them to function as groups, or communities, and that they are able to express motivation, desire, fear and harm, all feelings that have political dimensions when they are threatened. "Understanding the way [bonobos] communicate is also a way to understand what is important to them and what matters and what is relevant. So I think this is actually very important in terms of how we see them under the law. I hope it will help," said Berthet, who noted that when we started to understand that whales actually have a very complex language of their own, interest grew in protecting them. Bonobos, whose only wild populations are all in Democratic Republic of Congo, are highly endangered. "It's an area of the world that is really under a lot of threats because of all the mining and the logging. So I really hope that if we show that they have complex communication, that somehow they resemble humans in some respect, and that they have this intelligence, I might say, then I hope it will help to have concrete actions to really preserve them," Berthet said. Meanwhile, the very artificial intelligence that is increasingly allowing us to eavesdrop on animals is increasingly showing us that our own intelligence may one day be truly topped by machines, if not by the often very different but perhaps equally complex and meaningful intelligence of our fellow animals. Add the examples from psychology and the bungle we're making of the Earth we "manage," and humans don't have good evidence to put ourselves at the top of some kind of evolutionary hierarchy after all. And then this accumulating research into compositional language increasingly supports the idea that many animals are complex, sensitive and flexible thinkers. "This simple fact calls for a rethinking of foundational concepts in law and health sciences," Benvenuti wrote, nearly a decade before these latest findings. 'We now realize,' Crockford said about the chimpanzees, 'that to understand the complexity of animal 'languages', we need to study the animals' natural communication — what they communicate to each other. In the wild, chimps for example use specific calls for a number of contexts they never experience in captivity — they have a specific bark to recruit others to hunt, and other calls for territorial defense.' While the moratorium that currently exists on using chimpanzees in research in western countries, at least, is a good first step, it's not enough. And rethinking rights could also allow us to increasingly understand our animal brethren, in a kind of virtuous circle. 'We're just beginning to understand the complexity of chimp communication — as they have become critically endangered. As they are hunted by humans for the pet trade and for meat, and their forests are destroyed, their communities are broken up, risking that they lose their local cultures,' Crockford said. 'If we do not find a way to stop their decline due to human disturbance, we may never get to understand the complexities of their communication.'
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
France to cut red tape for British second home owners
France is considering overhauling visa rules to make it easier for Britons to stay in the country for more than 90 days at a time. The move would throw a lifeline to some 60,000 British second home owners who face restrictions on how long they can stay at their properties in the country. It comes as English councils crack down on second home owners by hitting them with double council tax bills – while British nationals buying property in Spain are threatened with a 100pc property tax. Currently UK passport holders may visit France for no longer than 90 days – approximately three months – every 180 days. A separate longer visa of six months is used by British nationals with homes in France to get around the rules, however it can only be issued once in a year. The French government is considering a proposal to reduce the six-month period second home owners must wait before reapplying for the long-stay visa. Bruno Retailleau, the French interior minister, said there would be a 'new and appropriate examination of the situation' on the visa requirements. In a letter to French senator Martine Berthet, who represents the Savoie region in the Alps, Mr Retailleau recognised 'the difficulties encountered by British nationals who own second homes in France in obtaining a long-stay visa'. The correspondence was published in the Majorca Daily Bulletin, a local English-language news website. Mr Retailleau's response was to a query lodged by Ms Berthet on behalf of a British second home owner in the country, who said the six-month break between applications for long-stay visas should be reduced. The so-called VLS-Tatrois visa lasts six or four months and requires proof of property ownership or a rental agreement in France. The only longer visa, lasting 12 months, is linked to a residency application. It has served as one of the preferred ways for Britons to escape the standard visa-free rules in France that limit stays to 90 days within a 180-day window. But due to the enforced six-month gap between consecutive applications for the scheme some Britons face lengthy waits before they can return to French properties for extended stays. A shorter waiting period would permit more regular visits. Britons currently have stricter travel requirements when visiting France than French nationals do in the UK, where they may stay for up to six months without a visa. Ms Berthet has been a prominent campaigner in favour of better visa rules for British nationals in France. In November 2023 she tabled legal changes that would have allowed second home owners to stay in the country for as long as they wished. The amendment to French immigration law was drafted to automatically hand six-month visas to Britons with second homes in France, but was ultimately shot down by France's top constitutional court in January 2024. A change to the VLS-Tatrois visa arrangements is a separate proposal from the remedy attempted by lawmakers last year. There has been little progress on the issue since that time. There are an estimated 60,000 British households who own second homes in France, a number that has decreased from 89,000 in 2008. In 2019, a report by estate agency Savills found France was the most popular location where Britons bought homes abroad, just behind Spain. France's approach is at odds with Spain whose prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced plans to impose a 100pc tax rise on property purchases by non-residents living outside the EU. Mr Sánchez branded foreign buyers 'speculators', who were out 'just to make money'. And last April, the Spanish government axed its famous 'golden visa' scheme, which offers non-EU citizens residency rights in exchange for a €500,000 investment, typically in property. It closed on April 3 this year. Meanwhile, councils in England were given the power to charge a 100pc council tax premium for second home owners from April 1 under laws passed by the previous Conservative government to ease housing pressures. Over two-thirds of local authorities opted to impose the charge. It means 157 second home owners will face council tax bills of up to £10,000 per year, according to Telegraph analysis. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
17-04-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
France to cut red tape for British second home owners
France is considering overhauling visa rules to make it easier for Britons to stay in the country for more than 90 days at a time. The move would throw a lifeline to some 60,000 British second home owners who face restrictions on how long they can stay at their properties in the country. It comes as English councils crack down on second home owners by hitting them with double council tax bills – while British nationals buying property in Spain are threatened with a 100pc property tax. Currently UK passport holders may visit France for no longer than 90 days – approximately three months – every 180 days. A separate longer visa of six months is used by British nationals with homes in France to get around the rules, however it can only be issued once in a year. The French government is considering a proposal to reduce the six-month period second home owners must wait before reapplying for the long-stay visa. Bruno Retailleau, the French interior minister, said there would be a 'new and appropriate examination of the situation' on the visa requirements. In a letter to French senator Martine Berthet, who represents the Savoie region in the Alps, Mr Retailleau recognised 'the difficulties encountered by British nationals who own second homes in France in obtaining a long-stay visa'. The correspondence was published in the Majorca Daily Bulletin, a local English-language news website. Mr Retailleau's response was to a query lodged by Ms Berthet on behalf of a British second home owner in the country, who said the six-month break between applications for long-stay visas should be reduced. The so-called VLS-Tatrois visa lasts six or four months and requires proof of property ownership or a rental agreement in France. The only longer visa, lasting 12 months, is linked to a residency application. It has served as one of the preferred ways for Britons to escape the standard visa-free rules in France that limit stays to 90 days within a 180-day window. But due to the enforced six-month gap between consecutive applications for the scheme some Britons face lengthy waits before they can return to French properties for extended stays. A shorter waiting period would permit more regular visits. Britons currently have stricter travel requirements when visiting France than French nationals do in the UK, where they may stay for up to six months without a visa. Ms Berthet has been a prominent campaigner in favour of better visa rules for British nationals in France. In November 2023 she tabled legal changes that would have allowed second home owners to stay in the country for as long as they wished. The amendment to French immigration law was drafted to automatically hand six-month visas to Britons with second homes in France, but was ultimately shot down by France's top constitutional court in January 2024. A change to the VLS-Tatrois visa arrangements is a separate proposal from the remedy attempted by lawmakers last year. There has been little progress on the issue since that time. There are an estimated 60,000 British households who own second homes in France, a number that has decreased from 89,000 in 2008. In 2019, a report by estate agency Savills found France was the most popular location where Britons bought homes abroad, just behind Spain. France's approach is at odds with Spain whose prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced plans to impose a 100pc tax rise on property purchases by non-residents living outside the EU. Mr Sánchez branded foreign buyers 'speculators', who were out 'just to make money'. And last April, the Spanish government axed its famous 'golden visa' scheme, which offers non-EU citizens residency rights in exchange for a €500,000 investment, typically in property. It closed on April 3 this year. Meanwhile, councils in England were given the power to charge a 100pc council tax premium for second home owners from April 1 under laws passed by the previous Conservative government to ease housing pressures. Over two-thirds of local authorities opted to impose the charge. It means 157 second home owners will face council tax bills of up to £10,000 per year, according to Telegraph analysis.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Chimp relatives use humanlike grammar, study finds
Humans are not the only species to combine concepts to build more complex meaning, a new study found. Bonobo chimpanzees combine calls in a manner similar to how humans structure words to make phrases and sentences, according to findings published on Thursday in the journal Science. The pygmy chimpanzees 'seem to combine calls to convey meaning that cannot be conveyed through single calls alone,' the researchers wrote. Because the genetic lines of humans and bonobos diverged more than 7 million years ago, the research suggests the roots of complex language go far deeper than had been previously believed. It follows other surprising findings of humanlike behavior in apes and monkeys, like the previous findings that uncovered the building blocks of human language in chimpanzee calls; strong similarities between basic jokes in humans and other primates; and monkeys using simple stone tools. Thursday's findings also suggest that the ability to combine sounds in 'complex ways is not as unique to humans as we once thought,' Mélissa Berthet, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Zurich, said in a statement. To arrive at this finding, Berthet and other researchers first built a comprehensive 'dictionary' of bonobo calls. That achievement marked 'the first time that we have determined the meaning of calls across the whole vocal repertoire of an animal,' Berthet added. This allowed the scientists to study whether bonobo communication — the use of words like 'grammar' or 'language' is controversial when applied to non-human species — had a key feature of human language: an ability to create meaning from smaller components that is greater than the sum of its parts. In its most 'trivial' form, that looks like a compound word, where the concepts are independent of each other and combine to make a short list: a 'French cheese' is both cheese and French; a 'tall man' is both tall and a man, and neither quality influences the other. But in more complicated forms, the meaning is greater than the sum of their parts. For example, a 'cold war' is neither cold nor a war, but something more complex. The concept had never been found in nonhuman species — until now. Researchers unveiled distinct vocalizations could combine to create greater meaning than either alone. A high-pitched hoot, for example, seems to mean, 'Pay attention to me,' while a low-pitched one signifies, 'I am excited or worried.' Put together — often by a speaker facing another bonobo who is threatening them — high or low hoot combination seems to mean something like 'Come help quick!' Similarly, the attention-seeking high hoot can combine with a high-pitched yelp — 'Join me over here!' — to convey that a party of bonobos is about to set off for travel. The researchers also note that communication in great apes may be even more complex, because different call combinations are also often happening in context of different gestures — another key component of communication in primates and humans alike. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
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. The study says bonobos — humanity's closest living genetic relative — can combine several types of calls to construct phrases in which one vocalization modifies the meaning of another. This is the first time such behavior has been documented clearly in an animal, the researchers behind the study said. The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, challenges the prevailing thought that humans are the only species with that ability, which is called nontrivial compositionality and is considered a fundamental building block of human language. 'We would never say that bonobos have language because language is specific to humans. It's our very special communication system,' said Simon Townsend, a professor at the University of Zurich who studies cognition and is an author of the study. But, 'we're showing that features of language seem to be present in the communication system of bonobos.' Outside experts said the work was convincing. And because humans and bonobos share a common ancestor, the work could help explain how humans developed their ability to use language in the distant past. 'This is a terrifically novel and creative study,' said Robert Seyfarth, a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, who studied primates and cognition and was not involved in this study. 'The evolutionary origins of language are kind of like the evolutionary origins of bipedalism, walking on hind feet. It doesn't occur overnight. It occurs gradually and there are intermediate stages along the way. How do you get started and get on this evolutionary trajectory? This begins to help us be more precise in deciding the answers to these questions.' It's possible that other animals, like chimpanzees, could also have the ability to form phrases where words modify each other's meaning. 'It could be that bonobos are exceeding chimpanzees in that capacity. It could be that they're doing the same. It could be that many other species are doing this,' Townsend said. 'Now, we've got the method to really test this.' It took months of slogging through the rainforest and chasing after wild bonobos with microphones to pave the way for this discovery. The study's lead author, Mélissa Berthet, of the University of Zurich, spent about six months in the Democratic Republic of Congo following three groups of wild bonobos with colleagues at the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve. Berthet and her colleagues took detailed notes about what was going on as the bonobos were making their vocalizations, recording about 400 hours of audio. 'I would have a list of about 300-something contextual parameters that I would use,' Berthet explained. 'Was my caller feeding? Was it resting? Was it grooming?' Bonobos have complicated, matriarchal social structures with lots of movement and activity, so Berthet took careful notes about group dynamics. The researchers ultimately mapped more than 700 vocal calls, including combinations, and the circumstances of these vocalizations' use. Then, they mapped the relationships between all the data points and found at least four instances in which the bonobos were combining different calls to create new meanings. The researchers don't have a precise understanding of what each bonobo call is intended to communicate, but they were able to make some assumptions about their purpose based on the context. The researchers said some calls meant things like 'I'm feeding,' 'Let's build a nest' or 'Let's keep traveling.' The size of the groups often change as bonobos come and go. 'They mostly talk about things to coordinate the group,' Berthet said. 'Just like humans, you know, they're in the family, then they go to work, then they go with friends, then again with family and so on. They really need complex communication to coordinate that. And so it's not surprising that most of the communication is about coordination, because this is actually a very important part of their social life.' Bonobos and chimpanzees are the closest genetic relatives to humans. The research suggests that the last common ancestor of these species — which likely roamed the Earth between 7 million and 13 million years ago — could have had the capacity to communicate with the same fundamental building blocks of language bonobos are displaying. The researchers behind this study said bonobos are almost akin to a time machine into humanity's past. And this research raises questions about what happened so long ago that pushed ancient humans to evolve and develop a more complex form of verbal communication. 'If bonobos and chimpanzees, in their natural communication systems, have a lot of these building blocks, it can help us understand what is that tipping point where humans jumped off into a language that is far more complex,' said Sara Skiba, a research scientist and director of communications for the Ape Initiative, a bonobo research facility in Des Moines, Iowa. Skiba was not involved in the new study. Bonobos are difficult to study in the wild. They live in fragmented habitat in Congo, which has experienced human conflict in recent years. The species is endangered and its population is likely less than 20,000, said Martin Surbeck, an assistant professor in the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and an author of the study. 'Bonobos really have this unique opportunity to hold kind of a mirror to humankind,' Surbeck said. 'I think they offer a unique opportunity, right, for us to really understand ourselves in ways that wouldn't be possible without them, and I think losing them, I think we lose a lot of, a part of our heritage to a certain degree.' This article was originally published on
