By Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyMay 25, 20259 Comments5 Mins Read

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Wild chimpanzees change the meaning of individual calls by combining them in different ways, a behavior that reflects how humans use language to create meaning through combining words.

Humans are the only species known to use full language, which involves combining sounds into words and words into structured sentences that convey infinite meanings. This process follows linguistic rules that determine how meaning changes with context.

For example, the word “ape” can be used in compositional ways to add meaning—such as “the ape eats” or “big ape”—or in non-compositional idioms like “go ape,” which takes on a new meaning entirely. Syntax, the rule system that governs word order, is essential to this process. For instance, “go ape” and “ape goes” use the same words but convey different meanings due to their order.

One of the central questions in science is understanding the origin of this exceptional linguistic ability. Researchers often compare human language with the vocal behavior of other animals, especially primates, to explore how language evolved. Most non-human primates rely on individual call types and have only a few known call combinations, usually to warn about predators.

This has led to the belief that their vocal systems are too limited to be considered precursors of human language. However, we may be underestimating the communicative abilities of our closest relatives. New findings suggest that chimpanzees may use call combinations in more complex and meaningful ways than previously recognized.

Studying the meaning of chimpanzee vocalizations

Researchers from the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology and for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and from the Cognitive Neuroscience Center Marc Jeannerod (CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1) and Neuroscience Research Center (CNRS/Inserm/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1) in Lyon, France recorded thousands of vocalizations from three groups of wild chimpanzees in the Taï National Park in Ivory Coast.

They examined how the meanings of 12 different chimpanzee calls changed when they were combined into two-call combinations.

“Generating new or combined meanings by combining words is a hallmark of human language, and it is crucial to investigate whether a similar capacity exists in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, in order to decipher the origins of human language,” says Catherine Crockford, senior author of the study.

“Recording chimpanzee vocalizations over several years in their natural environment is essential in order to document their full communicative capabilities, a task that is becoming increasingly challenging due to growing human threats to wild chimpanzee populations,” says Roman Wittig, co-author of the study and director of the Taï Chimpanzee Project.

Chimpanzees’ complex communication system

The study reveals four ways in which chimpanzees alter meanings when combining single calls into 16 different two-call combinations, analogous to the key linguistic principles in human language. Chimpanzees used compositional combinations that added meaning (e.g., A = feeding, B = resting, AB = feeding + resting) and clarified meaning (e.g., A = feeding or travelling, B = aggression, AB = travelling).

They also used non-compositional idiomatic combinations that created entirely new meanings (e.g., A = resting, B = affiliation, AB = nesting). Crucially, unlike previous studies which have mostly reported call combinations in limited situations such as predator encounters, the chimpanzees in this study expanded their meanings through the versatile combination of most of their single calls into a large diversity of call combinations used in a wide range of contexts.

“Our findings suggest a highly generative vocal communication system, unprecedented in the animal kingdom, which echoes recent findings in bonobos suggesting that complex combinatorial capacities were already present in the common ancestor of humans and these two great ape species,” says Cédric Girard-Buttoz, first author on the study.

He adds: “This changes the views of the last century which considered communication in the great apes to be fixed and linked to emotional states, and therefore unable to tell us anything about the evolution of language. Instead, we see clear indications here that most call types in the repertoire can shift or combine their meaning when combined with other call types. The complexity of this system suggests either that there is indeed something special about hominid communication – that complex communication was already emerging in our last common ancestor, shared with our closest living relatives – or that we have underestimated the complexity of communication in other animals as well, which requires further study.”

Reference: “Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion” by Cédric Girard-Buttoz, Christof Neumann, Tatiana Bortolato, Emiliano Zaccarella, Angela D. Friederici, Roman M. Wittig and Catherine Crockford, 9 May 2025, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adq2879

Funding: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, H2020 European Research Council, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Lost fishing gear makes up an estimated 70 to 90 per cent of plastic waste polluting the world’s oceans.

The Times Colonistabout 11 hours ago

• https://www.timescolonist.com/islander/one-old-gillnet-piles-of-bones-bc-group-targets-dangers-of-marine-ghost-gear-10686247

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1 / 3 DFO works to free to humpback whales tangled in fishing gear near Quadra Island. STRAITWATCH

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Commercial diver and part-time conservationist Bourton Scott has made a passion project out of searching out and cleaning up the unseen threat posed by “ghost gear,” the commercial nets and traps lost or abandoned off B.C.’s coast over the decades.

Lost overboard in bad weather, caught up on reefs and rocks or with the nets of other fishermen during frantic openings for fishing, the equipment doesn’t disappear but keeps wreaking havoc by continually trapping fish, seals, birds and even whales.

Such ghost gear in open water poses a bigger threat to marine ecosystems than the single-use plastic straws, cups and bags that show up in urban shoreline cleanup efforts, according to conservation groups and the Fisheries Department.

The group Scott co-founded, the Emerald Sea Protection Society, is among those trying to build awareness and public support for cleaning up the problem.

Gillnets, made from clear monofilament fishing line with openings just wide enough to catch target fish behind their gills, “are probably the most harmful,” he said.

“They’re the hardest to see in the water, they’re often suspended in the water column, which makes them a much more dangerous hazard for those animals living in those areas,” said Scott, who lives in Ladysmith.

“Under every gillnet that I’ve found, there’s always a bone pile, so evidence of its ‘ghost fishing’ for however long it’s been in the water.”

Scott said he found one gillnet with 15 live crabs caught up in its strands, along with the skull of a sea otter and the skeletons of several sea birds, during a cleanup of ghost gear at Alert Bay off the north Island last fall. “And I think we removed something like 15 [gillnets] from that area.”

The Emerald Sea crew embarked on that cleanup with the support of the ’Namgis Nation and backing from the NGO Ocean Conservancy’s global ghost gear initiative cleanup effort.

“Nobody wants to lose their gear,” said Joel Baziuk, associate director of the Ocean Conservancy’s ghost gear initiative.

However, it’s often too dangerous to recover gear in bad weather or tough currents, so “this is an unfortunate side-effect of that type of thing,” Baziuk said.

Baziuk’s conservation group says studies estimate that ghost gear makes up 70 per cent to 90 per cent of floating plastic in the gyres of garbage that collect on the open ocean.

Canada is one of the countries taking the problem seriously, with an active “ghost gear action plan” that has been in place since 2019, making it “one of the top two or three in the world leading on this issue,” Baziuk said.

The federal Fisheries Department did not make anyone available for an interview, citing the transition period following the federal election. On its website, however, the DFO said it spent $58 million on 143 projects to clean up ghost gear between 2020 and 2024.

DFO regulations require commercial fishermen to report lost gear. Between 2020 and 2024, the DFO received 288 lost-gear reports on the West Coast.

The objective of the DFO’s ghost gear program is to develop a “prevention focused strategy” to meet the government’s commitment to achieve “zero plastic waste by 2027,” according to the department’s website.

However, it’s difficult to tell how much of the problem is being fixed because “it is impossible to know how much ghost gear is in the ocean,” said researcher and educator Jackie Hildering, co-founder of the Marine Education and Research Society.

Hildering said researchers have observed that half of the humpback whales off B.C.’s coast have scars showing they’ve been caught in some kind of gear, though she added that researchers don’t know how many entanglements are with ghost gear and how many are with shellfish traps being actively fished.

Scott noted that trying to survey the extent of the lost-gear problem is a mammoth task on B.C.’s 20,000-kilometre coastline.

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By Dr. Chinta SidharthanReviewed by Susha Cheriyedath, M.Sc.May 25 2025

A new global review reveals how rapidly evolving H5 bird flu viruses are reaching new species, including dairy cattle, and stresses the urgent need for coordinated action to prevent the next pandemic.

Three influenza A (H5N1/bird flu) virus particles (rod-shaped). Note: Layout incorporates two CDC transmission electron micrographs that have been inverted, repositioned, and colorized by NIAID. Scale has been modified. Image Credit: CDC and NIAID

Since its discovery in 1996, the Gs/Gd lineage of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses with H5 haemagglutinin, including H5N1 and other H5Nx subtypes, has caused widespread infections and mortality among numerous animal species and sporadic infections among humans, with outbreaks now reaching every continent, even Antarctica.

In a recent review published in the journal Nature Reviews Microbiology, researchers at the Department of Viroscience, Erasmus MC, the Netherlands, reviewed the current knowledge on the evolution, global spread, and growing risks posed by this persistent and adaptable virus.

Influenza viruses

Influenza A viruses have caused four human pandemics and countless outbreaks among animal populations in the past century. Among them, highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIVs) pose a major threat due to their ability to evolve rapidly. While most avian influenza viruses circulate harmlessly among wild waterbirds, some have mutated into more deadly forms, particularly the H5 and H7 subtypes. When these viruses spill over to poultry, they can evolve into highly pathogenic forms that cause severe disease and death.

The Gs/Gd lineage of H5 viruses, which includes the well-known H5N1 subtype (first identified in humans in Hong Kong in 1997) and other H5Nx variants, emerged from a complex mix of avian viruses and has since diversified into numerous lineages. This lineage has become a dominant global threat, spreading across continents and infecting a wide range of birds and mammals. Furthermore, despite ongoing surveillance and control efforts, gaps remain in understanding how this virus spreads, evolves, and adapts to new hosts, including humans.

The current study

The researchers conducted a comprehensive review of scientific literature, surveillance reports, and genetic analyses to understand the evolution and spread of highly pathogenic H5 avian influenza viruses of the Gs/Gd lineage. They traced the virus’s origins back to a 1996 outbreak in domestic geese in Guangdong, China, and followed its genetic diversification through global outbreaks over the past 25 years.

The team examined how the virus has changed through a process known as reassortment, where gene segments from different influenza viruses mix in co-infected hosts, creating new virus variants. They focused on outbreaks in wild birds, poultry, and mammals, including tigers, sea lions, mink, and dairy cattle.

The study also analyzed how the virus crosses species barriers. This included reviewing molecular data on mutations in viral proteins, including hemagglutinin, neuraminidase, and polymerase components, that help the virus adapt to mammalian cells. Structural features of hemagglutinin that affect binding to host receptors, as well as changes in viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) polymerase that enhance replication in mammals, were examined. Additionally, the study investigated the immune responses in different species and how the virus evades these defenses.

To assess the impact on human health, the authors also reviewed data on confirmed human infections, exposure risks, and clinical symptoms, considered the role of environmental and agricultural practices in facilitating the spread of the virus, and examined current control measures like culling, vaccination, and surveillance.

Key findings

The study reported that the H5 viruses from the Gs/Gd lineage have undergone significant genetic evolution, enabling them to infect a wider range of species and persist globally. The virus, which originally circulated in poultry, has now spread to wild birds and mammals, including rare spillovers into humans.

Most alarmingly, it has recently reached dairy cattle in the United States, where it has spread primarily due to the movement of infected animals between farms. Contaminated milking equipment facilitates transmission within farms and causes widespread infections. The virus has now been detected on every continent, including Antarctica, marking an unprecedented expansion.

Its ability to reassort with other influenza viruses has also generated multiple variants, including those with new gene combinations that enhance adaptation to mammals. This genetic mixing has also improved the virus’s ability to bind to human-like receptors and resist mammals’ innate immune defenses.

Since 1997, there have been over 1,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of Gs/Gd lineage infections in humans, with more than 500 reported deaths; however, the true case fatality rate is uncertain due to likely underreporting of mild and subclinical infections and variability in severity between outbreaks. Most infections occurred after direct contact with infected poultry, but recent cases in the U.S. involving dairy farm workers suggested new transmission routes. Though sustained human-to-human transmission has not occurred, the increase in mild or undetected human infections raises concerns about pandemic potential.

The virus has also had devastating impacts on wildlife, with high mortality among sea lions, seals, and birds being documented across the Americas and Europe. Mammal-to-mammal transmission, especially in farmed mink and sea lion colonies, also indicates that the virus may be evolving toward more efficient spread among mammals.

The review highlights that available options for managing outbreaks in wildlife are limited and may include carcass removal and targeted vaccination of endangered species.

Conclusions

The ongoing spread and evolution of the Gs/Gd H5 lineage viruses, including H5N1 and other H5Nx subtypes, emphasize the serious threat these influenza viruses pose to animals, ecosystems, and human health. With increasing evidence of cross-species transmission and global distribution, this virus remains a looming concern.

The review highlights the critical need for a unified “One Health” approach that integrates animal, human, and environmental health strategies at a global level. The review indicated that strengthening surveillance, advancing vaccine strategies, expanding the use of newer vaccine technologies, coordinating international vaccine stockpiling and deployment, and integrating efforts across animal and human health sectors are crucial steps towards preventing future outbreaks and reducing the risk of a potential pandemic.

Journal reference:

• Bellido-Martín, B., Rijnink, W.F., Iervolino, M. et al. (2025). Evolution, spread and impact of highly pathogenic H5 avian influenza A viruses. Nature Reviews Microbiology, DOI: 10.1038/s41579-025-01189-4, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-025-01189-4