{"id":20506,"date":"2025-01-21T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T10:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20506"},"modified":"2025-01-21T10:24:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T10:24:28","slug":"mother-chimp-and-daughter-share-a-special-sign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20506","title":{"rendered":"Mother Chimp and Daughter Share a Special Sign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Humans are known to invent private hand gestures. Chimps in the wild do, too, a new study suggests.<\/p>\n

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Parents and their children, or people who know each other well, often share some expression that is unique to them \u2014 a phrase or gesture that began by happenstance but gradually acquired a meaning that only they know.<\/p>\n

The same is true of Beryl, a chimpanzee living in Kibale National Park, in Uganda, and her young daughter, Lindsay. When Lindsay wants to climb on her mother\u2019s back and travel, she puts one hand over Beryl\u2019s eye \u2014 a gesture that no other chimpanzee is known to make. It\u2019s their own private sign.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many words or gestures or things that are almost like inside jokes, that only have a meaning with just one other person,\u201d said Bas van Boekholt, a primatologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. \u201cThat happens very often to us humans. And now we also see that it happens in the wild, in chimps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. van Boekholt first noticed the gesture in 2022 during his second field season at a chimpanzee community in Kibale called Ngogo. Scientists have worked with them since the early 1990s; the chimps are now so habituated that researchers accompany them for hours at a time, often observing from just a few yards away, documenting their lives in intimate detail.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Of particular interest to Dr. van Boekholt is chimpanzee communication, especially gestures. Chimps have a rich repertoire of them, which they use in ways that might not technically qualify as language but are certainly language-like. More than 80 gestures have been translated<\/a>, including a palm-up, arm-extended request for food; a loud, long scratch that invites grooming; and a two-footed stomp that means \u201cStop that!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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No other chimpanzees are known to use the hand-eye gesture like Lindsay and Beryl do. It\u2019s their own private sign.<\/span>Osnabr\u00fcck University\/CBC\/Bas van Boekholt<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Humans are known to invent private hand gestures. Chimps in the wild do, too, a new study suggests.Parents and their children, or people who know each other well, often share some expression that is unique to them \u2014 a phrase or gesture that began by happenstance but gradually acquired a meaning that only they know.The same is true of Beryl, a chimpanzee living in Kibale National Park, in Uganda, and her young daughter, Lindsay. When Lindsay wants to climb on her mother\u2019s back and travel, she puts one hand over Beryl\u2019s eye \u2014 a gesture that no other chimpanzee is known to make. It\u2019s their own private sign.\u201cThere are so many words or gestures or things that are almost like inside jokes, that only have a meaning with just one other person,\u201d said Bas van Boekholt, a primatologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. \u201cThat happens very often to us humans. And now we also see that it happens in the wild, in chimps.\u201dDr. van Boekholt first noticed the gesture in 2022 during his second field season at a chimpanzee community in Kibale called Ngogo. Scientists have worked with them since the early 1990s; the chimps are now so habituated that researchers accompany them for hours at a time, often observing from just a few yards away, documenting their lives in intimate detail.Of particular interest to Dr. van Boekholt is chimpanzee communication, especially gestures. Chimps have a rich repertoire of them, which they use in ways that might not technically qualify as language but are certainly language-like. More than 80 gestures have been translated, including a palm-up, arm-extended request for food; a loud, long scratch that invites grooming; and a two-footed stomp that means \u201cStop that!\u201dNo other chimpanzees are known to use the hand-eye gesture like Lindsay and Beryl do. It\u2019s their own private sign.Osnabr\u00fcck University\/CBC\/Bas van BoekholtWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20508,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20506"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20509,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20506\/revisions\/20509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}