The bonobo—a pygmy chimpanzee—have been discovered to use what’s akin to human baby talk. The closest relatives to humans have started to make a series of sounds that parallel those of human babies before they begin to learn language, according to new research from a psychologist at the University of Birmingham. The study analyzed the sounds of bonobos in the Congo forest and discovered that they made different noises based on postive, negative, or neutral stimuli. The chimps had to interpret their own sounds in different contexts, which suggests a potential origin for human language.
