
Birdbrain: How Smart are Parrots? - lurkage
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_talbot?currentPage=all
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a-priori
That's a surprisingly good overview of research into animal language.

I don't find it surprising at all that animals like birds, and especially
primates, can learn rudimentary human language. It's reasonable to assume they
label things in their natural setting. In a social species, there would be an
evolutionary advantage for one member to be able to describe, for example,
that they just found a new banana tree.

We're not special enough for language to have developed from scratch in _homo
sapiens_. Our expressive language had to have come from simpler roots in other
species.

The thing about the bird making and using tools was new to me, however. I had
only heard of primates using tools before.

