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We may no longer use the gestures used by other great apes, yet we can still understand what they mean. That is the conclusion of a new study by scientists at the University of St Andrews, published in\u00a0PLOS Biology<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The study, led by Dr Kirsty Graham and Dr Catherine Hobaiter, involved 5,500 people playing an online game in which they had to interpret\u00a0the ten most common gestures used by chimpanzees and bonobos. Participants were asked to select the meaning of each gesture from four possible answers, and answered correctly more than 50 per cent of the time.<\/p>\n Additional detail on the context of the communication only had a very small effect on success, suggesting that humans can correctly interpret ape gestures from the actions themselves.<\/p>\n Video experiments have in the past been used to test language comprehension in non-human primates, but this study is the first to assess our own ability to understand the gestures of our closest living relatives.<\/p>\n \u201cAll great apes use gestures, but humans are so gestural \u2013 using gestures while we speak and sign, learning new gestures, pantomiming etc \u2013 that it\u2019s really hard to pick out shared great ape gestures just by observing people,\u201d says Graham.<\/p>\n \u201cBy showing participants videos of common great ape gestures instead, we found that people can understand these gestures, suggesting that they may form part of an evolutionarily ancient, shared gesture vocabulary across all great ape species, including us.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> The research builds on decades of work during which the scientists created a library of almost 100 gestures that apes use in day-to-day life. Chimpanzees<\/a><\/strong>, for instance, use a \u201creaching\u201d movement when asking for food.<\/p>\n Once the meaning of the gestures between the animals had been established, scientists could then investigate whether humans could still interpret them.<\/p>\n \u201cOn one hand it\u2019s really incredible that we\u2019re able to do this \u2013 Kirsty and I have spent years living in the forest with chimpanzees and bonobos to study their communication. But it turns out that perhaps we didn\u2019t need to!\u2019 says\u00a0Dr Hobaiter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can decode these gestures almost instinctively. It\u2019s a useful reminder that we are also great apes! And that, even though today modern humans have language, we\u2019ve kept some understanding of our shared ancestral system of ape communication.\u201d<\/p>\n It remains unclear whether humans\u2019 ability to understand specific great ape gestures is inherited, or whether humans and other great apes share an ability to interpret meaningful signals because of their general intelligence, physical resemblance and similar social goals.<\/p>\n Read the paper at:\u00a0doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.obio.3001939<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Main image: chimps \u2018reaching\u2019 to ask for food\u00a0\u00a9 Catherine Hobaiter (CC-BY 4.0)<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n By Sarah McPherson Published: Wednesday, 25 January 2023 at 12:00 am We may no longer use the gestures used by other great apes, yet we can still understand what they mean. That is the conclusion of a new study by scientists at the University of St Andrews, published in\u00a0PLOS Biology. The study, led by Dr […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":24228,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/humans-can-understand-the-gestures-of-other-great-apes-scaled.jpg",2560,1941,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/humans-can-understand-the-gestures-of-other-great-apes-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/humans-can-understand-the-gestures-of-other-great-apes-300x227.jpg",300,227,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/humans-can-understand-the-gestures-of-other-great-apes-768x582.jpg",768,582,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/humans-can-understand-the-gestures-of-other-great-apes-1024x776.jpg",800,606,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/humans-can-understand-the-gestures-of-other-great-apes-1536x1164.jpg",1536,1164,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/01\/humans-can-understand-the-gestures-of-other-great-apes-2048x1553.jpg",2048,1553,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Sarah McPherson Published: Wednesday, 25 January 2023 at 12:00 am We may no longer use the gestures used by other great apes, yet we can still understand what they mean. That is the conclusion of a new study by scientists at the University of St Andrews, published in\u00a0PLOS Biology. The study, led by Dr…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/24227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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