Intentional gestural communication amongst red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus)

Animal Cognition - Tập 25 - Trang 1313-1330 - 2022
Anne Marijke Schel1, Axelle Bono2,3, Juliette Aychet2, Simone Pika4, Alban Lemasson2
1Animal Behaviour and Cognition, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2Université de Rennes, Normandie Université, CNRS, EthoS (Éthologie Animale et Humaine), UMR 6552, Rennes, France
3Department of Ecology and Evolution, Universite de Lausanne, Biophore, Lausanne, Switzerland
4Comparative BioCognition, Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany

Tóm tắt

Apes, human’s closest living relatives, are renowned for their intentional and highly flexible use of gestural communication. In stark contrast, evidence for flexible and intentional gestural communication in monkeys is scarce. Here, we investigated the intentionality and flexibility of spontaneous gesture use in red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus). We applied established methods used in ape gesture research to analyse whether the body acts produced by a total of 17 individuals living in three different groups in captivity qualified as intentionally produced gesture instances. Results showed that signallers showed all hallmarks of intentionality during the production of 20 out of a total of 21 different types of body acts. These were only produced in the presence of other individuals, and the monkeys showed audience checking, sensitivity to the attentional states of recipients, adjustment of signal modality, and response waiting relative to their production. Moreover, in case of communication failure, the monkeys showed goal persistence, and regarding the production contexts they showed some signs of means–ends dissociation. Therefore, these monkeys are capable of flexible and intentional gestural communication and use this to communicate with conspecifics. Our results corroborate recent findings showing that intentional gestural communication was already present in the monkey lineage of catarrhine primates. We discuss our results in light of the comparative approach towards human language evolution and highlight our finding that these monkeys also showed flexible and intentional use of four ‘free’ manual gesture types.

Tài liệu tham khảo

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