Humans understand the gestures of the great apes, although they have long ceased to use them as a species. This has been reported by the Public Scientific Library.
Zoologists know that great apes can deliberately communicate with visual signals – gestures, and more than 80 such signals have now been identified. Many of these movements are common to all apes except humans, including distant relatives such as chimpanzees and orangutans. Humans are closely related to chimpanzees and bonobos as a species, but they do not use monkey gestures.
Catherine Hobaiter/University of St Andrews
Andrews University’s Kirsty Graham and colleagues tested people’s understanding of the 10 most common gestures used by bonobo chimpanzees through an online game. More than 5,500 participants were asked to watch 20 short videos of monkey movements and choose from four possible meanings for the movement.
It turned out that the participants fully understood them and interpreted the meaning correctly in more than 50% of the cases. Giving participants context of what was happening in the video only modestly increased their chances of success in interpreting the gesture. This means that people fully understand the meaning of the symbol and do not guess about it from the situation.
From this, scientists conclude that people to some extent understand the language of their distant ancestors. The authors hope to find out whether this fact is linked to the biological inheritance of certain factors or to the general resemblance of humans to apes.
Scientists reserved for all connection Still working for this test, but data is no longer collected.
Source: Gazeta
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