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Humans retain ‘ancestral’ understanding of ape gestures, study says
- bagels 4y agoLink to the study quiz (that includes videos of the gestures): https://research.sc/task/7918868 https://research.sc/task/7918868
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoLooking at the quiz, I am skeptical. At least for me, guessing the gestures was more about seeing the apes and how they were interacting and guessing what would happen next, more so than any intrinsic understanding of the meanings of the gestures.
- bagels 4y agoI didn't feel very confident in recognizing many of them either. Sometimes the context helped though (was there food in the scene?), or the reaction to the gesture.
- User23 4y agoAlternative theory: "humans are pretty smart and good at understanding animals." There's a fair amount of supporting evidence for that theory. I can understand a dog's gestures pretty well too. Does this mean I have some kind of Dune style genetic memory of when my ancestors first tamed wolves?
- haswell 4y agoBut what does it mean, biologically, to be “pretty smart and good at understanding animals”, and from where does this ability arise?
- 8note 4y agoIsn't that obvious? From understanding and communicating with each other
- somenameforme 4y agoIt seems like a pretty basic component of anything resembling intelligence. Even relatively simple animals tend to be be able to demonstrate some form of communication with each other. This animal is showing its teeth to me, the teeth it would use to attack me, posturing itself in an aggressive way, and making some noise. Ah I guess that noise doesn't mean let's be friends. So I think your question is where the intelligence came from, and outside of hand-wavy appeals to evolution, I think the simple answer is that nobody knows.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoRemains to be seen, although it's noteworthy that when around cats, dogs, horses, or cows; humans will pick up on their body language very easily, even though we have relatively distant common ancestors.
- mathematicaster 4y agoI also find myself intuitively in the camp of your alternative theory. Nevertheless I have an off the cuff comment to your question: Dune genetic memory is outside the bounds of our most basic understanding of inheritance because we do not know of any obvious mechanism to encode those memories into gamets in "one shot" (from direct experience to immediate offspring). Compare this with a very long arc over which a gazelle is born with brain initialized so carefully that it can learn to walk instantly, effectively having something that really looks like "genetic memory" of how to walk. My confused ramblings aside, this to me suggests that it is at least plausible that such commonality among apes and homo exists. Now, providing evidence for it is quite a different ball game ...
- simonh 4y agoHumans could identify the meaning of gestures “more than 50% of the time”. That’s really not a high bar to reach, especially as you’d expect most gestures to involve the parts of the body, or mimic the action the gesture is about. Furthermore plenty of animals have display or signalling behaviours, and we can often figure out what those mean. Ancestral memory of some kind really seems a stretch. If we could identify even non obvious gestures maybe 90+% of the time, that might require a better explanation than just figuring it out, but if it was that high I suspect the article would have said so.
- jvanderbot 4y agoIn the space of interpretation, there's a huge number of possibilities. 50% might be a huge outlier.
- ummonk 4y agoActually only 4 possibilities in the provided quiz - it's multiple choice.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- labster 4y agoDid you read the study, or just assume all multiple choice questions have four options? I couldn’t tell the number of choices from the article.
- ummonk 4y agoThe study says "four possible meaning answers", but more importantly the article links to the quiz used in the study itself: https://research.sc/participant/login/dynamic/505CF355-CEF5-44ED-B2F1-2CBA484BD2FA https://research.sc/participant/login/dynamic/505CF355-CEF5-...
- mc32 4y ago
- fortran77 4y agoThis is a bit "circular". Presumably the researchers have determined what these gestures mean, and now they're asking other humans to see if they can get the same meanings that these researcher-humans determined. We don't know for sure what the apes think. So we've shown that the way a group of human researchers interpret ape gestures is the same way many other humans from a self-selected subset interpret ape gestures.
- slowmovintarget 4y agoThey're also not accounting for cross-species training in the first place. The number of apes that have seen and emulated humans, then passed emulation to their children is not zero.
- technothrasher 4y agoYour objection reminded me of when I was a senior in college, and for independent study credit I helped a couple of postdocs with a psychology paper they were writing. They were concerned with researcher bias in category selection in surveys. Good for them! But their solution was to offer much more free form surveys and then have us, the researchers, spend many, many hours examining the individual surveys and picking categories to make up to fit the responses. I completely failed to see how this fixed anything as it was still us, the researchers, choosing the categories, and they failed to seem to want to comprehend that there might be a problem with their approach. The other undergrad who was also working with us approached me and thought we should ask for our names on the paper. I told him I didn't want my name associated in any way, but that he should shoot for the moon.
- whatshisface 4y agoI've seen people do a study like that the right way. It works by having separate researchers invent categories independently and then compare them once they have classified everything. No talking about the project is allowed until everybody is done.
- ummonk 4y agoWithout any controls (e.g. more distant apes such as orangutans, or even other expressive animals such as elephants), this study is completely meaningless.
- dboreham 4y agoOk, I saw this in the new wires the other day and wondered when it would come up. They know: humans can agree on what primate gestures mean, most of the time. They don't actually know: what the primates believe the gestures mean. And: even if there is agreement, why does that say anything about our language being evolved from a common ancestor gesture language? I mean, ok that might be true, but why is this evidence for that. Let me present my own survey data: I have deer in my yard sometimes. They know that once in a while I will throw out a couple of deadfall apples. So they ask for apples by standing, looking at me through the kitchen window for 10 minutes. Does this mean that English evolved from Deer-speak? No. The fact they're standing staring at me for a long time implies they're asking for something. Food is the only thing that fits the context. I suppose if I gave them food and they carried on staring, then I might assume they want a back rub...
- lofaszvanitt 4y agoAlso make them - a place (pond?) to drink - and an automatized cow brush.
- milleramp 4y agoI think what is missing is are we then able to use these gestures to successfully communicate back with the primates?
- raydiatian 4y agoWhat is the chimpanzee gesture for “please, sir, don’t tear my limbs off”? Because otherwise “get away from me” or “clean me” or “get on my back” is not going to go over well.
- josefx 4y agoThere was a lot of research into communicating with animals using sign language. I think it never went further than identifying objects, simple tasks and needs. Of course a lot of the research done back then was outright fraud, which might have interfered with alternative approaches. After all, why study alternative ways to communicate with animals when you can use sign language to discuss climate change with a gorilla.
- odyssey7 4y agoWhat is the difference between a gesture and behavior? Lots of animals can read the behavior of some other species.
- sedivy94 4y agoI’m a firm believer that there exists communication archetypes that span across species and millennia, so archetypal that they may be universal.
- zerobits 4y agoI was pretty excited about this result until actually going through the quiz. They give you so many hints, I don't think you can draw conclusions from this. For example: - In multiple videos an ape is eating, and another ape is trying to grab food out of their mouth. The options presented are like: "Give me that food" or "Move to a new position". Obviously the food is relevant. - In multiple videos a larger ape presents its back to the other, while the smaller moves towards hopping on or grooming it. Clearly this is the "climb on my back" or "groom me" options. In addition to providing a highlighted illustration, multiple choice, and slow-mo replays, it really just seems like this quiz was (intentional or not) designed to show an obvious positive result. Looking forward to better research on this.
- stuaxo 4y agoEvery time I bend down, my 5 year old tries to jump on my back - is this all small children or just my own ?
- nashashmi 4y agoYour 5 year old likely learned it directly from the apes. Ask chatgpt how to reduce ape influence in the house.
- havelhovel 4y agoFrom the article: “‘when we told participants a bit about what the apes were doing before, it did improve their understanding significantly but only by about 5 percent,’ she noted. ‘So it seems like the gestures themselves are really meaningful to people.’”
- fdgsdfogijq 4y agoIts not even proven science that we evolved from apes
- selimthegrim 4y agoWe both evolved from a common ancestor - we wouldn’t share so much DNA otherwise.
- tsimionescu 4y agoWhat else might we have evolved from?
- notch656c 4y agoParallel evolution? Incredibly unlikely, but possible. I'd like to think my great great grand daddy might be a mollusk with some wicked genetic mutations.
- hnbad 4y agoWe didn't evolve from apes, we are apes. Apes is a group that encompasses animals including gorillas, bonobos, humans and other animals.
- josephshaw92 4y ago[flagged]
- whoopdedo 4y agoThe big problem with the conclusion about an ancestral link is the researchers weren't studying our ancestors, they were looking at contemporary modern apes. Apes whose progenitors evolved side-by-side with humans. How can we be sure the apes haven't adapted their behavior based on their interactions with humans? Moreover, this type of reasoning reinforces the debunked model of speciation that claims apes are "less evolved" than humans. Modern apes have experienced the exact same amount of evolution as we have. It's only a difference in which ecological niche we each happened to specialize in.
- scotty79 4y ago> Moreover, this type of reasoning reinforces the debunked model of speciation that claims apes are "less evolved" than humans. They are less evolved in terms of acoustic language.
- scott_w 4y agoBut then we’re “less evolved” in terms of grip strength, force generation and any number of areas where other apes beat us. There’s no such thing as “more evolved” or “less evolved,” which is the parent’s point.
- scotty79 4y agoSure but the article talks about communication. If it was talking about grip strength humans might be portrayed like less evolved.
- automatic6131 4y ago>If it was talking about grip strength humans might be portrayed like less evolved. There is, in no sense, any way to talk about less/more evolved. Except for age of lineage, which is the same for all life on earth.
- pegasus 4y ago
- pploug 4y agoAm I the only one who read the title as "app gestures" - oh so my kids have inherited my ability to pinch to zoom?
- linuxftw 4y agoIt seems many people are dismissing this as report as complete junk science. They read the article, decided the conclusions are far-fetched. Imagine what 'scientists' can do for topics that aren't so easy to digest. If you question THAT science, why then you're just a conspiracy theorist.
- EEBio 4y agoNo, that’s usually not how it works. People usually get called a conspiracy theorist for making claims not based on (scientific) evidence. Often conspiracy theorists are not experts in the field and cannot distinguish between good and bad arguments (even though some conspiracy theorists have a uni degree in the field). Questioning a study does not a conspiracy theorist make, quality of of your arguments does.
- egberts1 4y agoPoliticians are mastery of their own cultural gestures. Ground chief, instructs large machine operators. Scuba divers, alerts others to surroundings. American Indian use sign language as a bridge between disparate tribal language. Gestano, an universal sign language for human today. Koko, a gorilla who mastered Sign Language. Sheepdog, also a master of distinguishing gesture vs. behavior. Once basic gestures are mastered, one can tell the difference between gesture and behavior. Heck, even body behavior is a form of a language in itself. Association gets harder when going from physical realm into psychological; even harder when going into virtual abstraction. (Disclaimer: my kid has a PhD in Communication Science)
- PaulHoule 4y agoAnimals have a universal language for gestures that of course we understand. If I was hanging out at the barn and a clown came up the driveway with a large bunch of balloons, one of the horses would try to catch my eye and want to see how I reacted when I looked at the clown and they would tend to respond to the clown as either "normal" or a threat depending on how I respond. In a herd, to first order, horses are going to look to the oldest and most experienced horse in the group on the assumption that they've seen a number of threats and survived and have the best judgement. Some of how we can ride and drive horses is because we can slot into the top of their social hierarchy in certain respects. Animals size you up as an animal based on various characteristics. On foot you would have a very hard time catching deer bedded down but you can get close to them very easily on a horse because animals usually parse "horse + human" as just a "horse" and because horse has eyes mounted on the side of its face they see it as a herbivore compared to you, with your eyes in the front, looking like a carnivore. It is not just horses, communication with dogs and cats are based on the same principles, wild animals are just as capable of "pointing" something out to another animals. I know is true for mammals because I've had a lot of dealings with mammals but it is probably just as true for birds and many reptiles.