B.B.C. Article
Chimpanzees can change their grunts to communicate better with new companions, according to a study of two groups that were housed together in Edinburgh.
In 2010, nine new arrivals from a Dutch safari park used an excited, high-pitched call for apples - while the locals used a disinterested grunt.
By 2013, the Dutch chimps had switched to a similar low grunt, despite an undiminished passion for apples.
This is the first evidence of chimps re-learning such "referential calls".
The findings, reported in the journal Current Biology, suggest that when chimp grunts refer to objects, they can function in a surprisingly similar way to human words - instead of simply being governed by how the chimp feels about the object.
Indeed, our ability to learn new "words" from our peers might date back to a shared ancestor with chimpanzees, some six million years ago.
Dr Katie Slocombe, the paper's senior author, is a lecturer in psychology at the University of York.

(Continues)

Sendraks wrote:This report gives me hope that one day, different tribes of football supporters will be able to communicate peacefully with each other.