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From: Mario Petrinovic <mario.petrinovic1@zg.htnet.hr>
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Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Re=3A_=E2=80=98Uniquely_human=E2=80=99_language_capacity_?=
 =?UTF-8?Q?found_in_bonobos?=
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2025 15:27:13 +0200
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On 7.4.2025. 7:22, Primum Sapienti wrote:
> 
> https://www.science.org/content/article/uniquely-human-language- 
> capacity-found-bonobos
> 
> Human language can combine words to create
> an infinite number of meanings—an ability
> that gives language its expressive power and
> sets it apart from the communication of other
> animals. Now, researchers have found a more
> modest version of this ability in bonobos,
> our closest living relative. The apes can
> combine different calls to create new
> meanings, the team reports this week in
> Science.
> ...
> Previous studies have found that other animal
> species can combine their calls, but only in
> “trivial” combinations that simply add the
> meanings together. Human language is much more
> powerful: Speakers can combine words into more
> than the sum of their parts. For instance,
> “tall cook” is a trivial combination—it means
> someone who is tall and a cook. But “good cook”
> is not someone who is good and a cook: They
> might be good at cooking, but terrible in
> other areas—perhaps a dangerous driver. This
> combination of words generates a new meaning.
> ...
> To find out whether bonobos are capable of making
> these “nontrivial” combinations, University of
> Zürich (UZH) animal communication researcher
> Mélissa Berthet spent 8 months following wild
> bonobo groups in the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve
> in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Every
> day, she and her guides set out at about 4 a.m.
> to find the bonobos before they left their
> overnight nests, then tracked them all day.
> Whenever she had a clear view of their
> activities, she recorded every vocalization,
> along with all its context: who made it, what
> they were doing, how other animals responded,
> and even what the weather was like. Any number
> of more than 300 contextual features could be
> linked with each call. Eventually, Berthet
> started to understand some of what the animals
> were communicating: “You see a vocalization
> and then everybody moves … and it’s very
> satisfying to be like, ‘Ah, I think I start to
> get it,’” she says.
> 
> Berthet recorded 700 different vocalizations,
> many of which were combinations of two
> distinct calls, like “whistle and peep” or
> “high hoot and low hoot.” To see whether the
> animals were creating new meanings from these
> combinations, the team borrowed an approach
> from human language studies, statistically
> analyzing how much context the vocalizations
> shared with each other. (In human language,
> words that occur in similar contexts tend to
> be more closely related in meaning.)
> 
> Three combinations stood out: Their meanings
> appeared different enough from those of their
> constituent calls that they seemed to count
> as nontrivial combinations. “High hoot and
> low hoot” was one of these. “Low hoot,” the
> team found, is often used in situations of
> high excitement, and appears to mean
> something like “I am excited.” “High hoot” is
> used when bonobos want to alert others to
> their presence and may mean “Pay attention to
> me.” But the combination of the two calls
> doesn’t simply mean “I am excited, pay
> attention to me”; instead, it conveys a more
> nuanced message. It is used specifically when
> another individual is putting on an aggressive
> display. The bonobo using this call
> combination might be trying to stop the other
> individual from displaying or get others in
> the group to pay attention to the caller, the
> authors suggest.
> 
> The findings suggest bonobos have a
> “precursor” to the human capacity to combine
> units of language to create new meanings, says
> senior author Simon Townsend, a primate
> communication researcher at UZH. Both bonobos
> and humans may have inherited the ability from
> our common ancestor some 7 million years ago,
> he says.
> ...

		First, the common ancestor for sure isn't 7 mya if Danuvius is 11.6 
mya. Whoever claims it is, is an idiot.
		Second, this is the prime example of bias in science, if you look hard 
enough you will find exactly what you want to find. Our language is far 
above "high hoot" and "low hoot", and a completely different thing, 
since all our communication mostly is placed above waterline (eyes, face 
expression, sounds). Why they don't have visible whites of the eyes, or 
face expressions, if we inherited something from common ancestor.