Our attempts to communicate with our ape cousins with sign language have long captured our imagination, but surprising new research shows that chimpanzees and bonobos share common gestures and ...

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.

It has been revealed that bonobos communicate using grammar similar to that of humans. Just as humans create sentences by linking words, bonobos convey meaning by chaining sounds with different ...

What happens when linguistic tools used to analyze human language are applied to a conversation between a language-competent bonobo and a human? New findings indicate that bonobos may exhibit larger ...

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 ...

Des Moines, Iowa – August 27, 2008 – 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, ...

You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Time now for your letters. First a correction from our July 1st show. In my essay that week, I spoke about a former military recruiter Raymond J.

Kanzi the Bonobo, who learned language and made stone tools, dies at age 44 Kanzi was not the first great ape to learn how to communicate with humans using symbols. Koko the gorilla and Washoe the ...

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 -- ...

Kanzi the bonobo continues to impress. Not content with learning sign language or making up “words” for things like banana or juice, he now seems capable of making stone tools on a par with the ...