We humans concoct never-before-heard sentences with ease, embedding phrases within phrases to express the wildest ideas we can dream up (“the purple pangolin that waltzed across the ballroom had a ...

Bonobos, great apes related to us and chimpanzees that live in the Republic of Congo, communicate with vocal calls including peeps, hoots, yelps, grunts, and whistles. Now, a team of Swiss scientists ...

Bonobos combine their calls in a complex way that forms distinct phrases, a sign that this type of syntax is more evolutionarily ancient than previously thought. Human language, often described as the ...