Hacker News with Generative AI: Primates

Bonobos use a kind of syntax once thought to be unique to humans (newscientist.com)
Bonobos combine their calls in a complex way that forms distinct phrases, a sign that this type of syntax is more evolutionarily ancient than previously thought.

Primates, Animal Behavior, Linguistics, Science, Evolution

192 points by docmechanic 19 days ago | 125 comments

Bonobos' calls may be the closest thing to animal language we've seen (arstechnica.com)
Bonobos, great apes related to us and chimpanzees that live in the Republic of Congo, communicate with vocal calls including peeps, hoots, yelps, grunts, and whistles. Now, a team of Swiss scientists led by Melissa Berthet, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Zurich, discovered bonobos can combine these basic sounds into larger semantic structures.

Animal Communication, Linguistics, Primates, Science, Research

55 points by rbanffy 22 days ago | 12 comments

Chimpanzees act as 'engineers', choosing materials to make tools (sciencedaily.com)
Researchers have discovered that chimpanzees living in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania employ a degree of engineering when making their tools, deliberately choosing plants that provide materials that produce more flexible tools for termite fishing.

Animal Behavior, Primates, Tool Use, Engineering

93 points by docmechanic 32 days ago | 68 comments

Bonobos recognize when humans are ignorant, try to help (arstechnica.com)
A lot of human society requires what's called a "theory of mind"—the ability to infer the mental state of another person and adjust our actions based on what we expect they know and are thinking.

Animal Behavior, Psychology, Primates

3 points by LinuxBender 81 days ago | 0 comments

Chimpanzees' stone tool choices may mirror ancient human ancestors' techniques (phys.org)
An international team of paleobiologists, anthropologists and behavioral scientists has found that the process used by modern chimps to select tools for cracking nuts may be similar to how ancient human ancestors chose their tools.

Chimpanzees, Archaeology, Primates, Tool Use, Ancient Humans

35 points by pseudolus 112 days ago | 22 comments

The Human Brain in Numbers: A Linearly Scaled-Up Primate Brain (nlm.nih.gov)
The human brain has often been viewed as outstanding among mammalian brains: the most cognitively able, the largest-than-expected from body size, endowed with an overdeveloped cerebral cortex that represents over 80% of brain mass, and purportedly containing 100 billion neurons and 10× more glial cells.

Neuroscience, Biology, Human Brain, Evolution, Primates

8 points by robertclaus 214 days ago | 0 comments

Marmoset Monkeys Use Unique Calls to Name Each Other (neurosciencenews.com)

Animal Behavior, Communication, Primates

5 points by yyyk 236 days ago | 0 comments

Marmosets use specific 'names' for one another, study finds (theguardian.com)

Animal Behavior, Primates, Research, Communication

8 points by hackernj 239 days ago | 0 comments