In sum, though capuchins may not achieve adult-human-like symbolic competence, this study demonstrates that animal species relatively distant from humans have undertaken the path of symbolic use and understanding.

It is very interesting support to evolutionary theory, because it seems that there is a continuum of language capabilities across species. I wonder how would the next step of the evolution of language might look like.

Humans are finally shrugging off the need to underrate animals as being nothing like humans (and anything they did that was close to human behaviour was deemed to be a copy) and nothing was to look more like a god than humans who were made in his image. Most are willing to now accept that we are closely related to these wonderful creatures. We are now more willing to accept their achievements and think of them as cousins, a few times removed.

A new study presents evidence of symbolic reasoning in tufted capuchin monkeys, a South-American species that diverged from humans about 35 million years ago.

I could've sworn that Australopithecus, the earliest ancestor of ours I've heard being called human-like, was 3-4 million years ago. Maybe I don't get the "35 million years ago" part referenced in the article. Bah, whatever.

As for likeliness of these creatures to us (like us to God?), that still doesn't stop these other animals from being experimented on. In fact, it has been used as the very reason to do so.