Mother-infant communication in chimpanzees
Friday, February 26, 2016 - 07:00
in Biology & Nature
Animals other than humans learn how to communicate via the manual modality. Gestures are also important in the communication of great apes. Mothers of chimpanzees, for example, communicate with their infants mainly by tactile, later by visual gestures. Infants also rely on vocalizations and actions, especially older ones. This is what researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and colleagues have observed in two chimpanzee species and communities of wild chimpanzees in Uganda and the Ivory Coast over two years and they found many parallels in the communication culture between the groups.