This story is free to read because readers choose to support LAist. If you find value in independent local reporting, make a donation to power our newsroom today. Listen 0:00 Back in the 1970s, a ...

SPOKANE, Wash. Washoe, a female chimpanzee believed to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept. Washoe, who first ...

Humans are often thought to be the only animals capable of language. But it’s difficult to prove a negative like this because we’ll never definitively know the subjective interior monologues of other ...

She spent her early years playing in the backyard of a small house in Reno, Nev., learning American Sign Language from the scientists who adopted her. By age 5, she had mastered enough signs to ...

How can one teach language to a chimpanzee who is unable to produce the basic sounds of spoken language (phonemes)? Extensive research has shown they can’t. Two approaches, each using a visual ...