Back in the 1970s, a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky took part in a Columbia University research study called "Project Nim." Project Nim was led by Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia who was ...

Humans are often thought to be the only animals capable of language. But it’s difficult to prove a negative like this because we’ll never definitively know the subjective interior monologues of other ...

A chimpanzee whose ability to learn American Sign Language suggested but did not prove that the animal could engage in humanlike conversation died on Tuesday, The New York Times reported today. The ...

She spent her early years playing in the backyard of a small house in Reno, Nev., learning American Sign Language from the scientists who adopted her. By age 5, she had mastered enough signs to ...

Speaking in grunts Chimpanzees specifically refer to favourite foods with distinct grunts, but the calls differ between populations, according to a new study. The chimps could then learn the "foreign" ...

Robert with Onan signing "hat". Source: Robert Ingersoll, with permission. I recently learned of a book by Robert Ingersoll and Antonina Anna Scarnà titled Primatology, Ethics, and Trauma: The ...

Human communication is a complex weave of words and gestures — a mix of vocal and visual signals. "People use vocal and visual communication in a very rich and combined way," says Joseph Mine, a ...

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 ...