Bonobos' calls may be the closest thing to animal language we've seen

Researchers from the University of Zurich, led by Melissa Berthet, have discovered that bonobos can combine vocal calls into larger semantic structures, revealing a form of communication with non-trivial compositionality. This trait, once believed to be exclusive to humans, highlights the complex social interactions of bonobos in the wild. By constructing a database of 700 bonobo calls and employing distributional semantics, the team excelled in understanding the contextual meanings behind the calls, successfully linking similar calls to specific social situations and establishing their significance in bonobo communication.

"We worked at a camp in the forest, got up super early at 3:30 in the morning, walked one or two hours to get to the bonobos' nest."

"Now, a team of Swiss scientists discovered bonobos can combine these basic sounds into larger semantic structures, a trait known as non-trivial compositionality, which we once thought was uniquely human."

Read at Ars Technica