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26 - Gestural usage and development in two chimpanzee groups of different subspecies (Pan troglodytes verus/P.t. schweinfurthii)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2019

Christophe Boesch
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Roman Wittig
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Catherine Crockford
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Linda Vigilant
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Tobias Deschner
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Fabian Leendertz
Affiliation:
Robert Koch-Institut, Germany
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Summary

Great apes deploy gestures as flexible communicative strategies in many social contexts. For decades, studies on chimpanzee gestures were biased towards captive settings. Despite well-documented intersite variation in chimpanzee behaviour, studies on their gestural communication in the wild have mainly focused on single communities. We investigated gestural usage and development in two chimpanzee communities and subspecies (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii at Kanyawara, Uganda; P.t. verus at Taï, Côte d’Ivoire). Studies focused on interactions between infants and their social partners in three contexts: joint travel, play solicitation and food sharing. Overall, gestural usage was strongly affected by infants’ age, kin relationship with recipients and previous interactions with non-maternal conspecifics. While repertoires largely overlapped, gesturing rates and intentional signal use seemed to differ between the communities. We speculate that variation in gregariousness and differentiated social relationships could be driving this difference. We discuss our results in light of the social negotiation hypothesis and the relevance of social exposure for communicative development.

Type
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The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest
40 Years of Research
, pp. 422 - 439
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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