Just like humans, orangutans will resort to mime to get their message across, scientists report. A team from Canada found the great apes would sometimes use elaborate gestures to explain what they meant. They mimed the action of being scratched to get an itch attended to, and enacted opening a termite nest to prompt a partner to do just that.
The study, published in Biology Letters, suggests ape communication is more complex than was thought. The researchers uncovered the primates' propensity for mime by looking through 20 years of observational studies that had been carried out on orangutans in Borneo. These animals had all previously been captive, but were now living free or partly free in the forests. The team found 18 cases where orangutans had been spotted performing mimes.
Professor Anne Russon, from Glendon College at York University in Ontario, Canada, said: "When I observed the events, yes, I was surprised - in the sense that it was very unusual and in one case their behaviour seemed, at the time, entirely bizarre and way out of character." Some of these gestures were quite complicated. One orangutan, Kikan, had injured her foot, and had been helped by a conservationist who dug out a small stone and then dripped latex from the stem of a fig leaf on to the wound to seal it.
A week later, Kikan attracted the same conservationist's attention and then picked up a leaf and re-enacted her treatment. Professor Russon said: "She's not asking for anything, which is the most common aim observed of great ape communication, but appears simply to be sharing a memory with the person who helped her when she hurt her foot. "It shows her understanding of how events had unfolded in a particular situation, which was very complex."
No comments:
Post a Comment