A groundbreaking new study has revealed that bonobos can combine vocalizations to express new concepts — a complex communication skill believed to be exclusive to humans.
Previous research has shown that southern pied babblers and chimpanzees can construct “trivial” combinations of meaningful vocalizations where each part contributes to the overall message without altering the other parts.
An example of this is the phrase “tall golfer” because “tall” and “golfer” describe the person separately without modifying each other’s meaning.
This recent study, published in Science, suggests that bonobos can create trivial and “nontrivial” combinations that form new meanings.
For instance, in “terrible golfer,” the word “terrible” modifies “golfer” — the person isn’t just terrible and happens to golf; they’re specifically bad at golf.
Mélissa Berthet, an animal communication researcher at the University of Zürich, recorded vocalizations from wild bonobo groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Researchers analyzed the vocalizations and identified seven distinct call types, each of which appeared in one or more combinations — including three that seemed to be nontrivial.
“It’s the first time in any animal species that there is an unambiguous evidence for non-trivial syntax, non-trivial compositionality, and so that changes the game,” evolutionary biologist Maël Leroux told New Scientist. “It’s revolutionary.”
Lady Freethinker is grateful to these scientists who helped shed light on the complexity of bonobo communication — offering powerful evidence that animals are far more cognitively and socially sophisticated than once assumed.
