Researchers decode gestures used by chimpanzees to communicate with each other
Monday, July 7, 2014 - 09:01
in Biology & Nature
(Phys.org) —A team of researchers has, for the first time, decoded gestures used by chimpanzees in the wild to communicate with one another. In their paper published in the journal Current Biology, the team, led by primatologists Richard Byrne and Catherine Hobaiter describe how they videotaped a group of chimps living in a forest in Uganda, and then studied the gestures of the chimps and found repeated use of the same gestures by different members to convey the same ideas. All in all they tabulated 66 gestures, that when used in certain ways, resulted in conveyance of 19 unique communication transactions.