Creating different sentences by using the same words in various ways was thought to be a unique feature of human language but scientists have now confirmed that monkeys have a similar way of communicating with "sentences".
Researchers have found that monkeys combine calls to make them meaningful in the same way that humans do.
An earlier study of wild putty-nosed monkeys in West Africa observed that they can mix different alarm calls to communicate new meanings to fellow members of a troop.
Now scientists report the first experimental demonstration that a primate other than humans conveys meaning this way, challenging one popular explanation of how language evolved.
The team from St Andrews found in the Gashaka Gumti National Park, Nigeria, that the creatures use their two main call types - "pyows" and "hacks" - to warn each other against predators.
The monkeys call out sequences of "pyows" to warn against a nearby leopard and sequences of "hacks" are used to warn about hovering eagles overhead. However, combining pyow and hack means something like "let's go",
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