Gorillas Seen Using "Baby Talk" Gestures—A First
By CHRISTINE DELL'AMORE - NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS
Added: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 02:14:28 UTC
Gorillas use a nonvocal form of "baby talk" to communicate with infants, a new study says. A first among primates, the discovery may give insight into how similar human communication evolved.
Lowland gorillas converse with each other primarily through nonvocal gestures.
While researching how captive gorillas communicate during play, study leader Eva Maria Luef noticed that animals older than three years had a special way of interacting with younger gorillas.
With infants, the older gorillas used touch and repeated gestures—such as grabbing or stroking the infant's jaw—more frequently than they did when communicating with their peers.
"We were surprised that ... [gorilla] infants are addressed differently," said Luef, of the Department of Education and Psychology at Berlin's Freie University.
The behavior is evidence of a "gestural motherese," according to the study, published in June in the Journal of American Primatology.
Human motherese, or baby talk, is a universal mode of connection between adults and infants. Regardless of their language, people baby-talk in the same way, with a raised pitch and a swooping, sing-song style.
So far, the rhesus macaque is the only nonhuman primate known to use vocal baby talk.
Richard Dawkins - RichardDawkins.net Comments
Rats Manipulated to be Attracted to Cats
- - TAM 2012 - JREF Comments
R. Elisabeth Cornwell at TAM 2012 - Social Networks: Civilizing the Future
- - The Royal Society Comments
Research suggesting that grey parrots can reason about cause and effect from audio cues alone- a skill that monkeys and dogs lack- is presented in Proceedings of the Royal Society B today.
Thomas H. Maugh II - LA Times Comments
Modern culture emerged in southern Africa at least 44,000 years ago, more than 20,000 years earlier than anthropologists had previously believed
Michael Balter - Science Comments
Studies to examine how children learn tasks that are not obvious and can even be counterintuitive.
Ker Than - National Geographic News Comments
After a poacher's snare had killed one of their own, two young mountain gorillas worked together Tuesday to find and destroy traps in their Rwandan forest home