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Declarative referential gesturing in a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).
- Source :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America; 11/22/2022, Vol. 119 Issue 47, Following p1-3, 7p
- Publication Year :
- 2022
-
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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- CHIMPANZEES
HOMINIDS
SOCIAL perception
GESTURE
SOCIAL evolution
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00278424
- Volume :
- 119
- Issue :
- 47
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 160789496
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206486119