Are humans the only species with enough smarts to craft a language? Most of us believe that we are. Although many animals have their own form of communication, none has the depth or versatility heard in human speech. We are able to express almost anything on our mind by uttering a few sounds in a particular order. Human language has a flexibility and complexity that seems to be universally shared across cultures and, in turn, contributes to the variation and richness we find among human cultures.
But are the rules of grammar unique to human language? Perhaps not, according to a recent study, which showed that songbirds may also communicate using a sophisticated grammar--a feature absent in even our closest relatives, the nonhuman primates.
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