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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 2, 2026

Examining Gesture Production in the Presence of Communication Challenges

Examining Gesture Production in the Presence of Communication Challenges

Published on: January 26, 2024

Serial gesturing by wild chimpanzees: its nature and function for communication.

Catherine Hobaiter¹, Richard W Byrne

¹Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9JP, UK.

Animal Cognition

|May 13, 2011

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Young chimpanzees use gesture sequences as a learning tool, persisting through trial and error. Older chimpanzees, with refined gesture knowledge, opt for more successful single gestures.

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Area of Science:

Primate communication
Animal behavior
Cognitive ethology

Background:

Chimpanzees utilize complex gestural communication, including series of gestures.
These series can be 'bouts' with response waiting or 'sequences' of rapid-fire gestures.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the function of multigesture series in chimpanzee communication.
To understand the distribution and correlates of gesture sequences and bouts.

Main Methods:

Analysis of 723 gesture sequences and 504 bouts in chimpanzees at Budongo, Uganda.
Correlational analysis of gesture success rates with signaller age and gesture type.

Main Results:

Older chimpanzees had higher gesture success rates by selecting effective gestures, often used singly.
Younger chimpanzees used more bouts, interpreted as persistence through failure.
Gesture sequences were less successful overall than single gestures but increased the chance of success if a known effective gesture was included.

Conclusions:

Young chimpanzees use sequences as a 'fail-safe' strategy to learn effective gestures from a redundant repertoire.
Older chimpanzees rely less on sequences as they gain knowledge, a process termed 'Repertoire Tuning'.
Sequences may retain importance for nuanced social interactions, particularly in play.