Chimpanzees communicate using 'human-like' methods

Man's closest animal relative, chimps, communicate in a distinctly'human-like' way, scientists have found. The primates use gestures that follow some of the same rules as basic human language. One was Zipf's law of abbreviation, which says commonly used words tend to be shorter, and the other is Menzerath's law, which predicts that larger linguistic structures are made up of shorter parts - such as syllables within spoken words. Experts made the discovery after studying videos of wild chimps living in Uganda's Budongo Forest Reserve. Chimpanzee sign language apes the way humans communicate, research has shown.