ArticleScientific reports2016
Wild chimpanzees modify modality of gestures according to the strength of social bonds and personal network size.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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15 citing papers in PubMed, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Spontaneous facial expressivity predicts real-world social network size and richness.iScience · 2026Article
- Individual variation in animal communication: from species averages to unique voices.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Social situations differ in their contribution to population-level social structure in griffon vultures.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Chimpanzee communities differ in their inter- and intrasexual social relationships.Learning & behavior · 2023Article
- Are ape gestures like words? Outstanding issues in detecting similarities and differences between human language and ape gesture.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Intentional gesturing increases social complexity by allowing recipient's understanding of intentions when it is inhibited by stress.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Variation in communicative complexity in relation to social structure and organization in non-human primates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Communicative roots of complex sociality and cognition: neuropsychological mechanisms underpinning the processing of social information.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- A socio-ecological perspective on the gestural communication of great ape species, individuals, and social units.Ethology, ecology & evolution · 2022Review
- Social and ecological complexity is associated with gestural repertoire size of wild chimpanzees.Integrative zoology · 2020Article
- The context of chest beating and hand clapping in wild western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla).Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Persistence in gestural communication predicts sociality in wild chimpanzees.Animal cognition · 2019Article
- Complex Sociality of Wild Chimpanzees Can Emerge from Laterality of Manual Gestures.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2019Article
- Convergence and divergence in gesture repertoires as an adaptive mechanism for social bonding in primates.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
- Social Brain Hypothesis: Vocal and Gesture Networks of Wild Chimpanzees.Frontiers in psychology · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Primates form strong and enduring social bonds with others and these bonds have important fitness consequences. However, how different types of communication are associated with different types of social bonds is poorly understood. Wild chimpanzees have a large repertoire of gestures, from visual gestures to tactile and auditory gestures. We used social network analysis to examine the association between proximity bonds (time spent in close proximity) and rates of gestural communication in pairs of chimpanzees when the intended recipient was within 10 m of the signaller. Pairs of chimpanzees with strong proximity bonds had higher rates of visual gestures, but lower rates of auditory long-range and tactile gestures. However, individual chimpanzees that had a larger number of proximity bonds had higher rates of auditory and tactile gestures and lower rates of visual gestures. These results suggest that visual gestures may be an efficient way to communicate with a small number of regular interaction partners, but that tactile and auditory gestures may be more effective at communicating with larger numbers of weaker bonds. Increasing flexibility of communication may have played an important role in managing differentiated social relationships in groups of increasing size and complexity in both primate and human evolution.
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