The Library
Declarative referential gesturing in a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)
Tools
Wilke, Claudia, Lahiff, Nicole J., Sabbi, Kris H., Watts, David P., Townsend, Simon W. and Slocombe, Katie E. (2022) Declarative referential gesturing in a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119 (47). e2206486119. doi:10.1073/pnas.2206486119 ISSN 0027-8424.
|
PDF
WRAP-declarative-referential-gesturing-wild-chimpanzee-(Pan-troglodytes)-Townsend-2022.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (842Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206486119
Abstract
Humans are argued to be unique in their ability and motivation to share attention with others about external entities—sharing attention for sharing’s sake. Indeed, in humans, using referential gestures declaratively to direct the attention of others toward external objects and events emerges in the first year of life. In contrast, wild great apes seldom use referential gestures, and when they do, it seems to be exclusively for imperative purposes. This apparent species difference has fueled the argument that the motivation and ability to share attention with others is a human-specific trait with important downstream consequences for the evolution of our complex cognition [M. Tomasello, Becoming Human (2019)]. Here, we report evidence of a wild ape showing a conspecific an item of interest. We provide video evidence of an adult female chimpanzee, Fiona, showing a leaf to her mother, Sutherland, in the context of leaf grooming in Kibale Forest, Uganda. We use a dataset of 84 similar leaf-grooming events to explore alternative explanations for the behavior, including food sharing and initiating dyadic grooming or playing. Our observations suggest that in highly specific social conditions, wild chimpanzees, like humans, may use referential showing gestures to direct others’ attention to objects simply for the sake of sharing. The difference between humans and our closest living relatives in this regard may be quantitative rather than qualitative, with ramifications for our understanding of the evolution of human social cognition.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology Q Science > QL Zoology |
||||||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Psychology | ||||||||||||
SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Chimpanzees -- Behavior -- Uganda -- Kibale Forest, Gesture, Animal communication, Animal psychology, Social perception | ||||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | ||||||||||||
Publisher: | National Academy of Sciences | ||||||||||||
ISSN: | 0027-8424 | ||||||||||||
Official Date: | 14 November 2022 | ||||||||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||||||||
Volume: | 119 | ||||||||||||
Number: | 47 | ||||||||||||
Article Number: | e2206486119 | ||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.2206486119 | ||||||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 12 December 2022 | ||||||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 13 December 2022 | ||||||||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
|
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year