Gorillas’ (Gorilla g. gorilla) knowledge of conspecifics’ affordances: intraspecific social tool use for food acquisition

The use of tools, long thought to be uniquely human, has now been observed in other animal taxa including several species of birds, non-primate mammals as well as some non-human primate species. Chimpanzees, one of humankind’s closest living relatives, exceed all other non-human animal species as they have been reported to use an exceptionally large toolkit. However, relatively little is known about the tool-use skills of the other great ape species. While the majority of tools described are inanimate objects, the use of social tools has received relatively little attention. Here we provide the first evidence of naturally occurring spontaneous exploitative behaviour of a conspecific as a social tool for food acquisition in non-human animals. We observed gorillas in captivity utilising a conspecific as a ladder to gain access to unreachable food. We discuss our findings in the light of other studies on social tool use and suggest the need for more nuanced interpretations of gorillas’ cognitive skills

Social games between bonobos and humans: evidence for shared intentionality?

"Triadic social games are interesting from a cognitive perspective because they require a high degree of mutual social awareness. They consist of two agents incorporating an object in turn-taking sequences and require individuals to coordinate their attention to the task, the object, and to one another. Social games are observed commonly in domesticated dogs interacting with humans, but they have received only little empirical attention in nonhuman primates. Here, we report observations of bonobos (Pan paniscus) engaging in social games with a human playmate. Our behavioral analyses revealed that the bonobos behaved in many ways similar to human children during these games. They were interested in the joint activity, rather than the play objects themselves, and used communicative gestures to encourage reluctant partners to perform their role, suggesting rudimentary understanding of others’ intentions. Our observations thus may imply that shared intentionality, the ability to understand and shares intention with other individuals, has emerged in the primate lineage before the origins of hominids.

Non-vokale Interaktion und Kommunikation - Aspekte vergleichender Verhaltensbeobachtung zwischen Mensch und Tier

Das Interview führte Ulrich Sollmann, BochumFragen an Frau Dr. Simone Pika, diesjährige Sofja Kovalevskaja-Preisträgerin der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung und Leiterin der neu gegründeten Forschungsgruppe “Comparative Gestural Signalling“ am Max Planck Institut für Ornithologie in Seewiesen

Intentional Presentation of Objects in Cooperatively Breeding Arabian Babblers (Turdoides squamiceps)

The emergence of intentional communication and the intentional presentation of objects have been highlighted as important steps in the ontogeny of cooperative communication in humans. Furthermore, intentional object presentation has been suggested as an extremely rare form of communication evolutionarily. Research on comparable means of communication in non-human species may therefore shed light on the selection pressures that acted upon components of human communication. However, the functions and cognitive mechanisms that underlie object presentation in animals are poorly understood. Here, we addressed these issues by investigating object presentations in wild, cooperative breeding Arabian babblers (Aves: Turdoides squamiceps). Our results showed that individuals presented objects to specific recipients. The recipients most often responded by approaching the signaler and the dyad then moveed jointly to copulate at a hidden location. We provide evidence that object presentations by Arabian babblers (i) do not represent a costly signal, as objects were not costly to acquire; (ii) were not used to trade food for sex, as the presentation of food was not more likely to result in copulation; and (iii) possessed hallmarks of first-order intentionality. These results show that intentional presentation of objects is not restricted to the primate linage and may suggest that the need to engage in cooperative interactions facilitates elaborate socio-cognitive performances

Taking turns : bridging the gap between human and animal communication

Funding: a Sofja Kovalevskaja-Award of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation awarded to S.P. generously supported the project, as did a Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Levelt Innovation Award awarded to K.H.K. and S.C.V., and a Max Planck Research Group awarded to S.C.V.Language, humans' most distinctive trait, still remains a 'mystery' for evolutionary theory. It is underpinned by a universal infrastructure-cooperative turn-taking-which has been suggested as an ancient mechanism bridging the existing gap between the articulate human species and their inarticulate primate cousins. However, we know remarkably little about turn-taking systems of non-human animals, and methodological confounds have often prevented meaningful cross-species comparisons. Thus, the extent to which cooperative turn-taking is uniquely human or represents a homologous and/or analogous trait is currently unknown. The present paper draws attention to this promising research avenue by providing an overview of the state of the art of turn-taking in four animal taxa-birds, mammals, insects and anurans. It concludes with a new comparative framework to spur more research into this research domain and to test which elements of the human turn-taking system are shared across species and taxa.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

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

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