• Coelacanth
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    15 hours ago

    Great comment always. In addition to dolphins I think it’s possible that corvids might demonstrate certain aspects of grammar too, though I don’t think the research is conclusive yet. I remember reading news about corvids possibly showing capacity for recursion.

    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzM
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      14 hours ago

      Chimps, too. I couldn’t find the article to link here, but I remember seeing somewhere that they have discrete howls that can be combined for subtler meaning; not too far from having a howl for “leopard”, another for “close”, and then using both to say “there’s a leopard nearby”.

      The key difference between chimps, corvids and dolphis vs. humans is that humans developed that system to the point it eclipsed non-verbal communication (although we still use it a fair bit).