There was a time when we thought humans were special in so many ways. Now we know better. We are not the only species that feels emotions, or follows a moral code. Neither are we the only ones with personalities, cultures and the ability to design and use tools. Yet we have all agree that one thing, at least, makes us unique: we alone have the ability of language.

It turns out that we are not so special in this aspect either. Key to the revolutionary reassessment of our talent for communication is the way we think about language itself. Where once it was seen as an unusual object, today scientists find it is more productive to think of language as a group of abilities. Viewed this way, it becomes apparent that the component parts of language are not as unique as the whole.

Take gesture, arguably the starting point for language. Until recently, it was considered uniquely human - but not any more. Mike Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and others have collected a list of gestures observed in monkeys and some other animals, which reveals that gestures plays a large role in their communication. Ape(猿) gestures can involve touch, vocalising or eye movement, and individuals wait until they have another ape’s attention before making visual or auditory gestures. If their gestures go unacknowledged, they will often repeat them.

In an experiment carried out in 2006 by Erica Cartmill and Richard Byrne from the University of St Andrews in the UK, they got a person to sit on a chair with some highly desirable food such as banana to one side of apes and some undesirable food such as vegetables to the other. The apes, who could see the person and the food from their enclosures, gestured at their human partners to encourage them to push the desirable food their way. If the person showed incomprehension and offered the vegetables, the animals would change their gestures - just as a human would in a similar situation. If the human seemed to understand while being somewhat confused, giving only half the preferred food, the apes would repeat and exaggerate their gestures - again in exactly the same way a human would. Such findings highlight the fact that the gestures of the animals are not merely inborn but are learned, flexible and under voluntary control - all characteristics that are considered preconditions for human-like communication.

【小题1】It is agreed that compared with all the other animals, only human beings ________.

A．own the ability to show their personalities

B．are capable of using language to communicate

C．have moral standards and follow them in society

D．are intelligent enough to release and control emotions

【小题2】According to the passage, humans are not so special in language ability because language ________.

A．involve some abilities that can be mastered by animals

B．is a talent impossibly owned by other animals

C．can be divided into different components

D．are productive for some talented animals

【小题3】What can we learn from that experiment by Cartmill and Byrne?

A．Apes can use language to communicate with the help of humans.

B．Repeating and exaggerating gestures is vital in language communication.

C．Some animals can learn to express and communicate through some trials.

D．The preferred food stimulates some animals to use language to communicate.

【小题4】What is probably the best title of the language?

A．Language involves gestures!	B．Animals language - gestures!
C．So you think humans are unique?	D．The similarity between humans and apes.