Except the talking animals depicted in Disney movies aren't so far off the mark, at least when it comes to a few select species.

Wait, what?

Dolphins, crows, primates and parrots have all been observed using unique calls when they want the attention of specific members of their groups. This means that, at least among these species, individual animals actually have the equivalent of their own names. Most perplexing of all seems to be parrots, because according to pirate-movie logic, it should scientifically turn out that every single parrot ever has the same name.

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"GWAAK! Polly wants some individuality! GWAAK!"

But now that scientists know that parrots have signature calls, a few questions come up, like: Who gets to decide the signature call that's given to each parrot chick? Is it the parrots themselves who decide what they should be called, thus making it an innate characteristic? Is some sort of alpha parrot handing out identifying sounds? In order to answer all these questions, researchers at Cornell University filmed parrots in the wild of Venezuela, along with their newborn chicks, to see exactly when and how a parrot got its name.

Moonbuggy
"He shall be known as TupAWWWK!"

What the scientists found was that it was not the parrot newborns who got to choose their signature calls. Instead, it was the proud parrot parents who gave each chick its name. Much like a human, the adult parrot will choose a name for its young soon after it's born. Each parrot, though, may tweak its own signature call as it grows older, elongating a whistle here or shortening a chirp there, essentially giving itself a nickname.

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"Hi! I'm (Saxophone solo from Careless Whisper)."

Once a new song catches on, every hip male in the community will start singing it, too. But that's just a bunch of whales in a group imitating each other. That's not like the mass media pop culture humans have, right?

Except scientists have found out that a song doesn't stay limited to just one population. A catchy enough tune will actually spread all over the Pacific, from Australia to French Polynesia, thousands of miles, over a couple of years. For some reason, all the whales east of Australia are unoriginal bastards who will just plagiarize their western neighbors once they hear them sing a new song.

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They just stick it over a dance beat and call it a remix.

Having such an active imagination is surely not just one of the most childlike traits you can probably think of, but also one of the most human. After all, it's not like other animal species are out there having little slumber parties with their dolls while we're not looking, right?

Except, yeah, there's one species that's totally doing exactly that. Surprisingly, when it comes to playtime, human kids and chimpanzees are actually more alike than you think.

Wait, what?

Researchers from Bates College and Harvard University found that young female chimps would take sticks, bark, small logs and vines, and not only cradle them as if they were baby chimps themselves, but also use their imagination for the whole doll-owning experience.

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The stick was later taken by the CPS.

When playing with their doll-sticks, the young females would cuddle with them, put them to bed and rest with them in their nests like a little girl sleeping with her plush toy for security. A few times, the little dolls even got the equivalent of their own Barbie dream houses, as the chimp girls would build separate nests just for them to pretend-live in. And during the day, the chimp girls would also walk around with their sticks tucked between their stomachs and their thighs, mimicking the way that mother chimpanzees carry their babies.

WWF, National Geographic

All this behavior, which was witnessed over a hundred times during 14 years, was not just limited to girl chimps. One young male chimp was seen using a stick to play "airplane," resting on his back and holding the stick up with his hands and feet, the way that many parents play with their young children. In another instance, a male chimp was seen with his own stick dolly after he saw his mom was pregnant, pretending to care for it. There were no reports on whether his chimp father went out and worriedly fashioned him some chimpanzee G.I. Joes to get him interested in "man stuff."

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"If I don't hear explosions from that tree stump in the next 30 seconds, you are grounded, mister."

They started screeching angrily -- the kind of call usually reserved for intruding enemy finches. The scientists tried playing the same sound sample again with another group, and they got pissed, too -- virtually every finch that heard it, in fact. The scientists had accidentally created the finch song version of a your/you're mistake.

In case you're thinking that maybe they had just accidentally created a finch song that naturally sounds violent or threatening, they played it for a group of finches that had been raised in isolation -- they never lived with finches in the wild. They were fine with it. They didn't screech.

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It was a vicious setback for members of the nascent finch home-schooling movement.

But then when those same finches spent two weeks with the first group, the ones that went apeshit at the sound of the song, soon they started getting pissed off at it, too. Being around the other finches taught them the rules of their "grammar," and taught them to get enraged at those who misuse it.

Or maybe you followed the recent NFL lockout, and heard about how both sides had to meet with a mediator to try to hammer out a deal so that the proceedings wouldn't break down into a fit of screaming and chair-throwing. It's a pretty brilliant system: Two people who would rather chug a gallon of peanut oil than have a conversation just call in a professional to do the talking for them. You might even say it's one of the pinnacles of human civilization.

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"People, please. You have to start talking so I can justify my $200."

Except, oh wait. Chimps have totally got the market on third-party mediators covered.

Wait, what?

Chimpanzees have figured out that when the feces hits the fan, man chimps need to stay the hell away from each other. That's when a very specific mediator walks into the picture: an older female who doesn't have sex on the brain.

Imagine two male chimpanzees are duking it out over who ate the last head lice or who pooted on Nuk-Nuk's favorite tree or whatever. (Like we know what they fight about.) Anyway, after the brawl, each male will sit and wait, presumably with his arms crossed and toes tapping, for the other to come over to reconcile. If no one makes the first move, a female chimp will make it for them.

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"Oh, for crying out loud. Tell me when they've stopped flinging poop at each other."

Here's how: The female will approach one of the males and start grooming him. You know, picking out dirt and bugs and gray hairs and whatnot in order to help him calm down. Then she'll walk over to the other male, making sure Fighter Male #1 follows. With Muhammad Ali on one side and Joe Frazier on the other, the female lets them groom her, together, because grooming is calming as shit.

Then, she walks away, her job done. She intervened, and resolved their monkey conflict. The two males are left sitting together as friends, with neither losing face. We're 95 percent sure this is exactly how the Cold War ended.

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This was their Bay of Pigs.