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0 pointsyongjik5mo ago0 comments

From what I've heard, language is unambiguously unique to humans, if you consider grammar an integral part of languages. You can teach chimpanzees hand signs, but they could never make the leap to stringing them together under a coherent rule: something like the difference between "Mom give me cookies" vs "I give mom cookies."

(I'm no expert, so take that with a grain of salt.)

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timschmidt5mo ago

Cetacean communication obeys Zipf's law: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11797547/

As does house finches: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.202...

Sperm whale codas exhibit contextual and combinatorial structure: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47221-8

Ants have developed symbolic language: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10093743/

Everywhere we look close enough, we find life doing smart things.

andsoitis5mo ago

Those are interesting examples. Do you know of a species where ALL of those properties (and more) exist?

timschmidt5mo ago

Likely all of the ones named, and more. These are just a sampling of papers and not at all exhaustive.

nylonstrung5mo ago

Bee "dance" communication is remarkably sophisticated and precise

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance?wprov=sfla1

adgjlsfhk15mo ago

proto-grammers are fairly common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot) for example shows that parrots are capable of understanding English word order to some extent.

rishav_sharan5mo ago

Don't think so. Whales and dolphins seem to have a fairly sophisticated language with regional dialects and accents.

whimsicalism5mo ago

Unique to modern humans, maybe. But that's only because we outcompeted/killed all of our sibling species that also spoke language. Denisovans likely had language as well.

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0 pointsyongjik5mo ago0 comments

(I'm no expert, so take that with a grain of salt.)

0 comments

timschmidt5mo ago

Cetacean communication obeys Zipf's law: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11797547/

As does house finches: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.202...

Sperm whale codas exhibit contextual and combinatorial structure: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47221-8

Ants have developed symbolic language: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10093743/

Everywhere we look close enough, we find life doing smart things.

andsoitis5mo ago

Those are interesting examples. Do you know of a species where ALL of those properties (and more) exist?

timschmidt5mo ago

Likely all of the ones named, and more. These are just a sampling of papers and not at all exhaustive.

nylonstrung5mo ago

Bee "dance" communication is remarkably sophisticated and precise

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance?wprov=sfla1

adgjlsfhk15mo ago

proto-grammers are fairly common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot) for example shows that parrots are capable of understanding English word order to some extent.

rishav_sharan5mo ago

Don't think so. Whales and dolphins seem to have a fairly sophisticated language with regional dialects and accents.

whimsicalism5mo ago

Unique to modern humans, maybe. But that's only because we outcompeted/killed all of our sibling species that also spoke language. Denisovans likely had language as well.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse