It was developed by one female named Georgia, and she introduced her family members to it, and now all the chimps in the group are doing it."
together above their heads when they groom each other with the other hand," de Waal says. just one group, where the chimpanzees hold hands. "There are no other bonobos in the world that I know of that do that."Īnd, de Waal adds, if one ape starts using a gesture in a unique context, others in the group are apt to copy it, leading to what's called "cultural transmission." The group develops its own dialect of gestures. "The bonobos they clap their hands sometimes while they groom each other," de Waal says. The apes in this study also started using an old gesture in a completely novel situation. "In that case, it seems to mean: Why don't you come help me? So the same gesture can be used for very different reasons." "So let's say I have a fight with you, and my best friend is coming around the corner, and I go to my best friend and hold out an open hand," de Waal explains. "And the apes use that in that particular context to beg for food."īut the researchers discovered that in a different situation, the open-hand gesture conveys something totally different. "The open-hand begging gesture is also a universal human gesture used for begging for money and for food," de Waal notes. The researchers linked each gesture with the context of what was going on at the moment.Īmong those gestures, says primatologist Frans de Waal, is when a chimp extends an open hand when it sees another chimp with something it wants - food, for example. Researchers Frans de Waal and Amy Pollick videotaped hundreds of hours of the chimps and bonobos, which showed the primates using more than 30 distinct gestures such as waving a hand, raising an arm, dabbing with a finger or reaching out. Chimps and bonobos are two separate species of apes genetically, they are humans' closest relatives. Researchers at Emory University studied gestures used by two groups of chimps and two groups of bonobos. Watch a group of apes for a while and you'll inevitably see them use their hands to communicate that they want something from another - like food, or to play, or to be groomed, or to have sex. An adolescent bonobo male making sexual advances to a female adds the arm raise gesture.
0 kommentar(er)
