Fine, so various species of animals have demonstrated signs of traits we might once have considered “uniquely human” — empathy, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence, to name just a few. But grammar! We humans still have our grammar in general, and syntax in particular. That still makes us special, right?
Maybe not, reports the Washington Post’s Rachel Feltman. According to a new paper in Nature Communications, a particular type of bird — the Japanese great tit, similar to the chickadee here in North America — uses syntax in its communication with its fellow birds. More specifically, as Feltman writes, these birds use a particular type of syntax: compositional, referring to the way a sentence or, in this case, a series of chirps — is structured. We humans use compositional syntax to get across complex ideas. For example:
Again, this particular type of syntax was long thought to be a human-only thing. Until now. Feltman explains:
But when the order of that call was swapped around by a tricky scientist to D-ABC, the birds didn’t respond, “at least not as strongly or consistently as they did to ABC-D,” David Wheatcroft, who studies animal communications at Uppsala University, told the Post. He theorizes that other animals likely communicate in a similar way — scientists just haven’t caught on yet. “We hope people start looking for it and find it everywhere,” he told the Post. “Because then we can start answering the question of how and why syntax evolved. For now, we don’t have any close relatives that we know who use syntax. And it’s a big question. Why not just convey a new meaning by creating a new word? Why does order matter? We hope that in the future, this research will help give us insight into why syntax evolved in humans.”
For now, though, we can take this as further evidence that perhaps people are not, alas, the most special creatures on the planet.
This article was written by Melissa Dahl from Science of Us and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
