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Biologists have discovered that wild chimpanzees communicate using similar gestures to humans (do they give researchers "the finger?") This will give linguists a clue as to how language evolved among humans.

Researcher Anna Roberts has identified 20 to 30 manual gestures used by chimps, a third of which are similar to those used by humans. These include beckoning to make someone approach and flailing their arms to make someone leave (so if you don’t want to be compared to a primate, watch your gestures). Roberts thinks they suggest that a common ancestor of both humans and chimps must have used similar gestures.
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Chimps can read each others’ minds to an extent. If, for instance, one of them spots a dangerous snake hiding in the leaves on the forest floor, he seems to know whether or not he needs to alert the others–whether or not they have noticed it too. Videos of wild chimps in Uganda reveal that, when they spot the fake snake that scientists have hidden there, they are more likely to make warning calls when if others in their troop have not seen the danger.
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Didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas? Chimps don’t always either, so they improvise–giving us a window into how human children play.

Female chimpanzees seem to treat sticks as dolls, carrying them around until they’re old enough to produce real chimp babies, while young males remain uninterested. This not only reveals that chimps (like humans) can use their imagination, it also points out basic differences between boys and girls.
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One of the mysteries of DNA is how we can share so many genes with chimpanzees, and yet be so different from them. Now scientists say this has to do with which genes have been “turned on.” There has been speculation that chimps were intentionally altered long ago by scientists from another world, in order to create humans. While there is no proof of this, now we know how it would have been done.
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