A recent study has discovered that people can understand apes' sign language

People regularly utilize gestures, such as waving, nodding, and dynamic arm movements, to complement and develop discourse. 

 

Recently, it has been proposed that humans may also understand the apes' use of sign language, raising the possibility that humans may still have retained from their ancestors a grasp of ape communication. 

In order to express their daily goals, great apes employ more than 80 signals, according to a study that was published on Tuesday in the journal PLOS Biology. 

 

One of these signals is the "huge loud scratch," which implies "groom me." It is used by apes to remove debris or insects from one another's hair. "Object shake" can mean a variety of things, including "move aside," "let's have sex," and "groom me." To chimpanzees, the "directed push" means "climb on my back," but to bonobos, it means

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The study found that bonobos and chimpanzees are the closest living cousins of humans, sharing more than 90% of our motions. According to the study's authors, primatologist Catherine Hobaiter, a principle investigator at the university's Wild Minds Lab, and research scholar Kirsty E. Graham of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, these gestures may have played a significant role in the development of human language. 

 

More than 50 ape movements have been observed in infants between the ages of one and two, according to researchers. Therefore, it was assumed that humans may have kept their memory of the fundamental components of ape motions.

How does it function?

Researchers used data from 5,656 viewers of 20 web movies that were edited to display a bonobo or chimpanzee gesture but not the reaction it elicited. The proper gesture's meaning has to be chosen by the participants from one of four alternatives. 

 

To include in the movies, the researchers choose 10 of the most prevalent gesture forms that had previously been discovered to convey meaning to both chimpanzees and bonobos. To make it easier for untrained viewers to recognize the motion in the clips, they were each accompanied by a brief illustration of the gesture. 

 

A "video only" game or movies with one line of context explaining what the apes were doing prior to making a gesture were randomly assigned to each participant.

 

 

The participants were found to be able to effectively understand the chimpanzee and bonobo movements with slightly over 50% accuracy, which is double what is expected by chance, Graham wrote to CNN via email on Thursday. Some motions, such the "mouth stroke" (which means "give me that food") and the "great loud scratch," had success rates of up to 80%. 

 

The "object shake" was the only gesture to which participants were unable to correctly identify either the primary or alternate meanings, demonstrating that this skill was still present when determining the meaning of more ambiguous movements with many meanings. 

 

The study's authors wrote, "Our participants' ability to decipher monkey signals complements recent findings that suggest humans may be able to perceive affective cues in ape vocalizations."

Biology or intelligence?

The researchers emphasized that the underlying process through which humans can understand apes is still a mystery. 

 

Some possibilities for this conundrum include the biological inheritance of the great ape repertoire, the similarity between gestures and the activities they are intended to elicit, and the fact that humans and apes share body plans and social purposes. 

 

"We need to look at how people interpreted the gestures; do people have a vocabulary or capacity that they inherit, or do we have to think our way through it? It's a major subject that will need to be addressed in many different ways, Graham added. 

 

But this study is a crucial proof of concept, and from here we can tinker with the data that participants receive and ask them more questions.