My original comment was not just about communication, so I'm not sure what bird calls have to do with any of this. Even so, it is unclear if birds actually hav

My original comment was not just about communication, so I'm not sure what bird calls have to do with any of this. Even so, it is unclear if birds actually have infinite use of finite means in the expressively meaningful way humans do. Regardless, language's communicative ability is only one part of the uniqueness of human capabilities - birds clearly do not have the thought/reasoning capabilities (to which language is tightly entwined) that we do. We can point to behaviors that are unique to us. Since these behaviors must have some cognitive basis, they can serve to tell us how different we are. There is clearly a reason that no other animals understand abstract math or build rockets that fly into space. We simply haven't seen any evidence of other animals creating new knowledge and explanations using internal, rational thought in the way that humans do. The original point of my post was simply to suggest that there is, in fact, a "psychological secret sauce" that makes humans different from other animals. We don't yet understand the nature of this secret sauce, but this should not preclude us from doing the things that De Waal wants to do: to understand animals on their own terms and avoid treating them like "defective adult humans" simply because their brains are different. > Rather than studying where animal cognition, especially in genetically related species, resembles human cognition, we should be studying where it differs from human cognition. I am unaware of any scientists that think we shouldn't study where animal cognition differs from human cognition. There is no reason to favor differences over similarities, they can both give insights.