Please welcome chimpanzee researcher from the university of St. Andrews,
Doctor Cat Hobaiter.
Hello. Lovely to meet you.
So you've been asking some really interesting questions about ape language
and can you tell us more about your work.
Yeah, absolutely. So what people had done in the past was
try to teach apes our language. So human language or sign language.
Or they'd looked at their vocalisations,
but what we've been looking at is their gestures.
OK.
And it turns out that they've got a lot of different gestures,
so their own natural communication contains
60 or 70 different hand and body movements that they're using every day to ask -
come here, go away, I want that, all the little meanings.
And how do you work out what those gestures mean?
What we do is we look for a particular gesture and then we're looking for what happens next.
And if I were to do this and you responded back to me,
one or two cases it could be anything or you could misunderstand me,
or I could keep going, but what I'm looking for is what stops me from signalling.
So if I'm asking you for something then the thing
that you do that makes me happy
as I signal it is the thing that I wanted.
Yeah, yeah so you have to get the whole context.
So we need to look at the signaller, at the recipient, at the gesture,
and then we need to look at not just one or two but hundreds of cases
so we can see the patterns emerging in the behaviour.
And you've been using the general public
to help you with your research as well, haven't you?
Yep. So we were able over a few years to look at all of the other apes
but there was one of them missing which was us.
And we know we have language but we don't know if we still have access
to some of the communication that the apes also use.
The sort of gestural stuff they're using. - Exactly.
So whether or not if we showed a member of the public a particular gesture,
could they guess what it meant.
And what we did was put up lots of videos online and ask everyone to come along
and sort of play the game and have a go.
Can we have a go at it now. - Yes, please.
Fantastic. So we've got a clip to start with.
We're going to watch this closely, because we're going to ask you
what you think is going on.
So the gesture there was that kind of arm. - The little arm raise from Charlotte.
And it's from, is that a baby? - Yes, she's just a little one.
So do we think that's A - I want that B - Move closer
or C - Go away
Audience: B
Yep, you guys are all well versed in chimpanzee already that was "move closer".
OK, can we try another one?
We're just highlighting this because it happens very quickly.
Yeah, this is a really subtle one. So it's just that little foot movement
as she looks back and gives a little foot wiggle to her son.
Is that: play with me? Climb on me?
or come here?
Audience: B! - B, yeah.
It's rather sweet that one, very very swift. Really subtle.
So this is really fascinating. It does look like you're seeing a sign language.
You're seeing really gestural use of communication.
They're not just waving their arms around passionately,
there's very precise meaning being conveyed here.
But of course the real power of human language is
that we can combine our words and symbols into sequences.
And that gives us a more complex level of meaning. Can the chimps ever do this?
Do you ever see any kind of examples of sequences?
Definitely. So what we see sometimes are these one off gestures
but they will also put gestures together.
Sometimes a couple at once.
That was a big scratch and a shaking the object.
And he's actually waiting there and whatever that gesture was
it doesn't seem to have done the trick because Rohara is ignoring him.
So he's going to do that again. - He's doing it again and this time...
The arm comes up. So we've got a scratch, a tree wiggle and the arm going up.
And it worked. Oh alright then, I'll get down.
She's a bit of an old lady.
So the tree waving is the sort of "come here, I'm in charge". The scratching?
The scratching usually means groom, let's groom, let's get together and groom.
Our big question for us now is when they're putting these gestures into sequences.
If it was human words, the order of the sequence
would make a difference to the meaning,
and we're trying to work out now if that's the same for the chimps.
Amazing. Thank you so much, Cat, thank you.