Abstract
Gestural communication among nonhuman primates evolved as a response to their complex social environment. In this scope, males and females, adults and non-adults employ different gestures, probably due to their distinct social roles. In this study, a within and between age group analysis of the gestures produced in different contexts was carried out. For this purpose, a community of 16 captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) was observed during a 3-month period. Initially, data were collected through ad libitum sampling in order to identify their gestural repertoire. Subsequently, focal sampling was used to identify who gesticulated with whom and in what context. Overall, the results showed that juvenile chimpanzees tend to direct their gestures to different age groups according to the context; more specifically, juvenile chimpanzees frequently gesticulate within their age group in play contexts, and with older individuals in locomotion and affiliation contexts. Based on this, a certain degree of flexibility in juvenile chimpanzees gestural signalling is suggested, to the extent that they rather direct their gestural signs to chimpanzees of an apparently more adequate age group, with the aim of involving themselves in the activities’ context in which the gestural sign is produced.
Highlights
Over the past decades, research on gestural communication in nonhuman primates has become a rather appealing area due to the phylogenetic proximity between humans and other primates
Besides the hypothesized association with the human language, gestural communication used by nonhuman primates plays a fundamental role in the transmission of information among individuals
According to some authors (Maestripieri, 1999; Call and Tomasello, 2007), the gestural communication of nonhuman primates is influenced by the complexity of their social environment
Summary
Research on gestural communication in nonhuman primates has become a rather appealing area due to the phylogenetic proximity between humans and other primates. For this in an early phase of the individual’s on- purpose, we hypothesized that the contogeny They state that playing provides text of gesture communication would socialization opportunities as well as the differ between and within age groups necessary experiences to stimulate the interactions, for both juvenile and adult development of a complete gestural rep- chimpanzees, and match their social priertoire — flexible and intentional — and orities. Data Collection tural repertoire (table 2) was produced according to the following procedures: With the aim of recording interac- (1) morphological description of gestural tions during which chimpanzees dis- signs [analogous to Hobaiter and Byrne played gestural signs to communicate (2011b), or Roberts et al (2014)] always
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