Alston’s singing mice carry out complex vocalizations and even appear to converse politely with one another. The neural circuitry that makes this possible is simpler than researchers expected An illustration of an Alston’s singing mouse from the 1882 publication  Biologia Centrali-Americana: Mammalia Public domain via Wikimedia Commons When it comes to conversation, the closest the animal kingdom gets to humanlike abilities may be found in an unassuming Central American mouse. Alston’s singing mice let loose chirping songs that can go on for up to 16 seconds, and they don’t just perform solo. Often, two mice will squeak back and forth, refraining from interrupting each other and achieving a conversational cadence similar to that of two humans engaged in a witty repartee. Working with a team of researchers at New York University, Arkarup Banerjee , now a biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, determined in 2019 that the singing mice’s conversations were much like our own .…