Human brains do something peculiar when a chimpanzee screams or hoots. Instead of treating those sounds as generic animal noise, a small region in the auditory cortex lights up in a way that looks ...

Two studies of wild chimps point to the evolutionary roots of human language. The studies found that chimp communication often relies on rhythmic... Chimps' rhythmic drumming and complex calls hint at ...

LONDON -- Staff at a Scottish safari park were shocked to discover the identity of a prankster who bombarded their mobile phones with mysterious calls -- a chimpanzee. The Blair Drummond Safari Park ...

From Spanish and Swahili to Finnish and Filipino, over 7,000 languages are spoken across the world today. Humans are unique in that we are the only species known to use language. However, new research ...

Humans are the only species on Earth known to use language. They do this by combining sounds into words and words into sentences, creating infinite meanings. This process is based on linguistic rules ...

Researchers have found two important building blocks of human speech in wild chimpanzees, one of our closest relatives. A pair of studies finds that chimp communication includes both rhythmic ...

This next story could not be introduced by a chimpanzee, unfortunately, but chimps do possess some of the building blocks of spoken language. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports on two new studies that hint at ...