It was the telegram exchange that sparked an identity crisis for humankind. In 1960 a young Jane Goodall working in a remote forest in Tanzania observed a chimpanzee she named David Greybeard using ...

Why is human culture - the shared body of knowledge passed down across generations - so much more powerful than animal cultures? "What's special about our species?" is a question scientists have ...

An image generated by prompts to Google Gemini. (Courtesy of Joe Nalven) This column was composed in part by incorporating responses from a large-language model, a type of artificial intelligence ...

Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, why are human beings the only one that paints self-portraits, walks on the Moon and worships gods? For decades, many scholars have argued that the difference stems ...

Two chimpanzees meeting with each other apparently have a discussion using hand gestures, one of the human-like characteristics of other mammals. (Getty Images) Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, ...

For all of human history, with the exception of thoughts about some other animals and the idea that there might be forms of intelligence we cannot perceive, humanity has been alone. In myth and ...

Language has long been considered a uniquely human trait, with features that mark it out as distinct from the communication of all other species. However, research published in Science has uncovered ...

Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, why are human beings the only one that paints self-portraits, walks on the moon and worships gods? For decades, many scholars have argued that the difference stems ...

A ritual dance honoring Yoruban ancestors is one of the countless examples of human culture. Jorge Fernández/LightRocket via Getty Images Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, why are human beings the ...