Is wit a sign of evolutionary fitness? A new study explores how "quick-wittedness" and ancient verb-noun compounds shaped the evolution of human grammar through sexual selection. Learn how "killjoys" ...

Is wittiness a kind of fitness? Ljiljana Progovac explores the idea that quick-wittedness—using and combining words in a ...

In A Nutshell A linguist argues that wit, humor, and wordplay helped drive human language evolution through sexual selection, ...

Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite ...

A comparison with the environmental settings and biological adaptations of nearly 6,000 terrestrial mammalian species demonstrates the profound advantages of human cultural adaptations.

Language is one of the few faculties that still seems to be uniquely human. Other animals, like chimpanzees and songbirds, have developed elaborate communication systems, but none appears to convey ...

Researchers discovered that autism’s prevalence may be linked to human brain evolution. Specific neurons in the outer brain evolved rapidly, and autism-linked genes changed under natural selection.