Chestnut-crowned babbler becomes first known non-human species to communicate using language

A small gregarious bird that lives in the Australian outback has been found to communicate with one another using a simple form of language – the first species other than humans known to do so. Scientists studying the vocal noises made by the chestnut-crowned babbler have shown that it uses combinations of different sounds that on their own are meaningless but when combined convey a certain message to other members of the species. Although bird songs are known to have different meanings, scientists have not been able to show until now that individual messages can be made by using different combinations of the same repertoire of sounds, much like the phonemes or individual sounds that make up human words.