Aaand we even made the cover! With beautiful Gloria, who is grooming her infant, Gwen, two bonobos of the Kokoalongo community at the Kokolopori Fieldsite in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We are very thankful to our funders, especially the @nccrlanguage.bsky.social

In conclusion, our findings suggest that the tendency to direct vocalisations at infants has been massively expanded in the human lineage (after the split with bonobos and chimpanzees), potentially with language.

However, surrounding vocal communication - that is, communication not specifically directed at the infant - was present at broadly equivalent levels in chimpanzees, bonobos and humans.

We show that human infants receive dramatically more infant-directed vocal communication than non-human great ape infants.

To explore its evolution, we compared the amount of vocal communication that is directed at infants in both humans (from diverse cultural backgrounds) and wild non-human great apes (orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos). 🎙️👶🐵🦍🦧

This research sheds light on a fundamental aspect of what makes us human: our capacity for language and how it is passed from one generation to the next. A key part of this process is infant-directed communication - communication directed to children.

with 14 authors in total: Lara Nellissen, Marion Laporte, Martin Surbeck, Maria van Noordwijk, Shelly Masi, Birgit Hellwig, Erik Willems, @zuberbuehler.bsky.social, Carel van Schaik, @sabinestoll.bsky.social and Simon Townsend