Gestural communication of the gorilla (Gorilla gorilla): repertoire, intentionality and possible origins
Open Access
- 1 February 2009
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Animal Cognition
- Vol. 12 (3), 527-546
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0213-4
Abstract
Social groups of gorillas were observed in three captive facilities and one African field site. Cases of potential gesture use, totalling 9,540, were filtered by strict criteria for intentionality, giving a corpus of 5,250 instances of intentional gesture use. This indicated a repertoire of 102 gesture types. Most repertoire differences between individuals and sites were explicable as a consequence of environmental affordances and sampling effects: overall gesture frequency was a good predictor of universality of occurrence. Only one gesture was idiosyncratic to a single individual, and was given only to humans. Indications of cultural learning were few, though not absent. Six gestures appeared to be traditions within single social groups, but overall concordance in repertoires was almost as high between as within social groups. No support was found for the ontogenetic ritualization hypothesis as the chief means of acquisition of gestures. Many gestures whose form ruled out such an origin, i.e. gestures derived from species-typical displays, were used as intentionally and almost as flexibly as gestures whose form was consistent with learning by ritualization. When using both classes of gesture, gorillas paid specific attention to the attentional state of their audience. Thus, it would be unwarranted to divide ape gestural repertoires into ‘innate, species-typical, inflexible reactions’ and ‘individually learned, intentional, flexible communication’. We conclude that gorilla gestural communication is based on a species-typical repertoire, like those of most other mammalian species but very much larger. Gorilla gestures are not, however, inflexible signals but are employed for intentional communication to specific individuals.Keywords
This publication has 51 references indexed in Scilit:
- Physical maturation, life‐history classes and age estimates of free‐ranging western gorillas—insights from Mbeli Bai, Republic of CongoAmerican Journal of Primatology, 2008
- Do captive mandrills invent new gestures?Animal Cognition, 2007
- Orangutans Modify Their Gestural Signaling According to Their Audience's ComprehensionCurrent Biology, 2007
- Ape gestures and language evolutionProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007
- Differential use of attentional and visual communicative signaling by orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) in response to the attentional status of a humanAmerican Journal of Primatology, 2006
- The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?Science, 2002
- The cognitive foundations for reference in a signing orangutanPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1990
- Abstracts of papers to be presented at the meetingAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1987
- The Ape in Our HousePublished by University of Illinois Press ,1953
- THE APE AND THE CHILDOptometry and Vision Science, 1933