How smart are #NonHumanPrimates? This study shows that #macaques can learn to rearrange members of 5-object sequences to non-adjacent positions, suggesting that they form non-spatial cognitive maps of item relationships during learning, a hallmark of #intelligent behavior @PLOSBiology https://plos.io/40fZIKi

#SilentSunday #nonhumanprimates #wildlife #spidermonkey #pasopacifico

Except primate communication systems, vocal, gestural or multimodal are NOT 'language'.

Language is a fundamentally #digital system -- uniquely among animal #communication systems. It makes 'infinite use of finite means'. NH primate gesture and vocalisation remains #analog and cannot do this.

Our affective outbursts like 'oh!' 'Ahh!' etc are aspects of NH primate communication still in our repertoire -- they are not the linguistic elements.

#language #evolution #nonhumanprimates
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-decode-language-primate-cousins.html