Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Sixty years ago, scientists embarked on an experiment to teach American Sign Language to chimpanzees—and ultimately prove humans ...

This story is free to read because readers choose to support LAist. If you find value in independent local reporting, make a donation to power our newsroom today. Listen 0:00 Back in the 1970s, a ...

SPOKANE, Wash. Washoe, a female chimpanzee believed to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept. Washoe, who first ...

Forty years ago, I published an article, "Can a Chimpanzee Create a Sentence?" My answer was, definitively, "No." At the time, that conclusion was controversial. It was also headline news because ...

Language processing in humans depends on the neuronal connection between language areas in the brain. Until recently, this language network was thought to be uniquely human. Now, in a discovery ...

Humans are known to invent private hand gestures. Chimps in the wild do, too, a new study suggests. By Brandon Keim Parents and their children, or people who know each other well, often share some ...

Human speech isn’t something we’re born with. Rather, we acquire the ability to communicate using speech through a set of developmental stages we pass through as we grow from infancy. New research on ...

When we think about what sets humans apart from other animals, language often comes to mind. Language is more than words—it also relies on the ability to build shared understanding through ...

Was the evolution of spoken language more of a song or a dance? The responses of chimpanzees to a stuffed snake suggest it might have been more like a stage show, with vocal and gestural modes of ...