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

By Mélissa Berthet, Docteur en biologie spécialisée en comportement animal, University of Zurich

Humans 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 believed that only humans extensively used compositionality. Animal communication was thought to be mostly a mere random assortment of calls, with only rare…

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