My son is a wizard. He walks into the kitchen, looks at me and utters the magic words: “Can I have a cheese and tomato sandwich, please?” A few minutes later, just such a snack appears in front of him ...

Language is one of the few faculties that still seems to be uniquely human. Other animals, like chimpanzees and songbirds, have developed elaborate communication systems, but none appears to convey ...

What makes the human brain distinctive? A new study published in Cell identifies two genes linked to human brain features and provides a road map to discover many more. The research could lead to ...

Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite ...

The origins of human language remain mysterious. Are we the only animals truly capable of complex speech? Are Homo sapiens the only hominids who could give detailed directions to a far-off freshwater ...

A superb fairy-wren calls to a Horsfield's bronze-cuckoo. Brood parasites like cuckoos lay eggs in other birds' nests and leave them behind for the host birds to raise. David Ongley / Cornell Lab of ...

Today, humans speak or use signs in approximately 7,500 different languages. However, this figure, impressive as it may seem, ...

South Africa has one of the world’s richest fossil records of hominins (humans and their fossil ancestors). But many misconceptions still exist regarding human evolution, and school textbooks contain ...