STARNBERG, Germany, May 24 (UPI) -- Campaign season may cloud the cooperative nature of human language, but conversation does require cooperation, and new research shows humans' closest relatives, the great apes, employ cooperative communication.
Shouting over fellow conversers may play well on Crossfire, but in the real world, it's likely to leave a person without anyone to talk to. Talking requires turn-taking. Scientists with the Humboldt Research Group of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and other university researchers, found the communications of bonobos and chimpanzees feature turn-taking sequences.