Human brains are singularly special in the animal kingdom, writes Andrew Quixley, Data Science and AI Sales Lead, IBM South Africa. We are the curious, communicative collaborators who rose from a simple foraging existence on the savannahs to build structures of incredible complexity. Sure, other animals are curious, communicative and collaborative too. An octopus will investigate and solve problems; elephants use infrasound to communicate over vast distances; termites collaborate to build structures that are millions of times larger than any individual; but none of these feats comes close to the scale of human complexity. And the key to this complexity is our ability to generate language. There are 7 099 official languages on Earth.