Do Baboons Point?:

doi:10.1017/9781009445696.022

18 - Do Baboons Point?:

A Review of Research on Gestural Communication in a Monkey

from Part Two - Evolutionary Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2026

Adrien Meguerditchian

Edited by

Mark A. Krause ,

Kim A. Bard and

David A. Leavens

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Mark A. Krause: Affiliation:
Southern Oregon University
Kim A. Bard: Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Dearborn
David A. Leavens: Affiliation:
University of Sussex

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Summary

In contrast to great apes, gestural communication including hand and body gestures has been poorly investigated in monkeys. In the last twenty years in the studied group, the research conducted into the baboons (Papio anubis) housed in social groups at the Station de Primatologie CNRS (South of France), has reported some key properties of language such as intentionality, learning flexibility as well as the underlying lateralization and hemispheric specialization of the brain. This chapter also addresses specifically the question of referential properties of some gestures in baboons. These latter researches suggest that some individuals are not only able to learn to point “imperatively” to request food but also “declaratively” to show object within mother–infant interaction. According to these collective findings, which are congruent with the ones reported in great apes, it is thus not excluded that features of gestural communication shared between humans, great apes and baboons, may have played a critical role in the phylogenetic roots of language and dated back, not to the Hominidae evolution, but rather to their much older catarrhine common ancestor 25–40 million years ago.

Keywords

gestural communication pointing referential communication primates monkeys

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Type: Chapter
Information: Pointing
Culture, Development, and Evolution
, pp. 343 - 355

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009445696.022 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2026

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