Forbes, October 24, 2005
Humans may be the great communicators of the natural world, but we’re hardly the only ones. Plenty of animals trade signals with one another–calls to love, calls to war. Flowers even woo bees with scents and colors, while bacteria can decide when enough of them have gathered in our guts to start making us sick. Looking at these simpler communication systems is offering scientists some clues to how our own gifts of language evolved. And so it should be no surprise that they’ve focused much of their efforts on our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees. Primatologists have spent years observing them, either in African forests or at zoos. And they’ve seen and heard a lot. Chimpanzees hoot, blow Bronx cheers, wave sticks, clap their hands and drum on trees. The tough part comes in figuring out what all the ruckus means.