Humans are often thought to be the only animals capable of language. But it's difficult to prove a negative like this because we'll never definitively know the subjective interior monologues of other animals, if they even exist. Nonetheless, much research has been poured into the study of animal intellect and whether creatures like orcas, pigeons and octopuses share a similar type of sentience, especially when it comes to our close primate cousins, chimpanzees. One of the most outstanding and intriguing questions is whether chimps have language — and a little ape named Nim Chimpsky has only made the prospect more controversial.
People who study languages almost universally know the name "Noam Chomsky." In addition to being the father of modern linguistics, the popular intellectual has written more than 150 books on myriad political and social subjects. As a result, the name "Noam Chomsky" is familiar not only to students of linguistics, but also political nerds and social justice advocates.
