Humans are the only species on Earth known to use language. They do this by combining sounds into words and words into sentences, creating infinite meanings.

This process is based on linguistic rules that define how the meaning of calls is understood in different sentence structures. For example, the word “ape” can be combined with other words to form compositional sentences that add meaning: “the ape eats” or append meaning: “big ape,” and non-compositional idiomatic sentences that create a completely new meaning: “go ape.”

A key component of language is syntax, which determines how the order of words affects meaning. For instance, how “go ape” and “ape goes” convey different meanings.

Digger wasps make a short burrow for each egg, stocking it with food and returning a few days later to provide more. A new study reveals that mother wasps can remember the locations of up to nine separate nests at once, rarely making mistakes, despite the fact nests are dug in bare sand containing hundreds belonging to other females.

The paper is published in the journal Current Biology and is titled “Memory and the scheduling of parental care in an insect population in the wild.”

Mothers feed their young in age order, adjusting the order if one dies, and they can even delay feeding offspring that had more food at the first visit. Their intricate scheduling reduces the chance that offspring starve.