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Dolphins 'talk' to their young in a higher pitch, just like humans do

26 June 2023

Female dolphins modify their vocalisations in the presence of their offspring, mirroring the ‘baby talk’ used by humans


Listen to an Australian duck say ‘you bloody fool’ like a human

Listen to an Australian duck say ‘you bloody fool’ like a human

5 September 2021

When raised in captivity, musk ducks learn to copy the sounds of human life around them, which shows that they are what’s known as vocal language learners like parrots and humans


Puzzle-solving great apes: The shared abilities underpinning language

Puzzle-solving great apes: The shared abilities underpinning language

19 July 2021

The evolutionary origins of speech may be glimpsed in the tool-using abilities of great apes.


gorilla

Meet the puzzle-solving gorillas shedding light on how speech evolved

19 July 2021

The evolutionary origins of speech may be glimpsed in the tool-using abilities of great apes, as Clare Wilson discovered on a visit to a wildlife reserve in the UK


tamarin

Monkeys can change their accent to communicate with another species

26 May 2021

Red-handed tamarins change their calls to sound more like pied tamarins where the two species share the same patches of forest, and doing so may help the two species understand each other


chimpanzee

Chimpanzees seem to 'speak' in sentences of three or more calls

15 February 2021

The ability to combine multiple words to create new meanings is thought to be unique to humans, but a study of chimp calls hints that it isn't


orangutan

Orangutans create new ways to communicate with each other in captivity

4 February 2021

Using new expressions to convey meaning to other group members is a fundamental building block of complex language – and orangutans in captivity can do it


Baboons that live together in tight-knit groups have similar ‘accents’

Baboons that live together in tight-knit groups have similar ‘accents’

16 December 2020

Male Guinea baboons that live in gangs produce grunts that sound more like one another than those outside their group, similar to human accents


Fay Clark

Gaming with gorillas: Designing puzzles to keep great apes happy

2 December 2019

Gorillas at Bristol Zoo Gardens took on a high-tech game based on principles of why humans enjoy puzzles. Zoologist Fay Clark explains


Your body's hidden language: How smell reveals more than you ever knew

Your body's hidden language: How smell reveals more than you ever knew

9 October 2019

We can sniff out fear, find solace in the smell of a loved one, breathe in the scent of happiness. How we're deciphering the subliminal signals of human scent


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