Monkeys & language

Monkeys & language

The paper is out, Campbell’s monkeys concatenate vocalizations into context-specific call sequences. Nicholas Wade and Ed Yong review the evidence. One of the issues is that chimps don’t seem to have syntax, so how can a monkey? But since domesticated dogs have better human-comprehensible theory of mind than chimps I don’t think genetic distance or general intelligence should weight that highly.

Razib Khan