Wild chimpanzees show objects to others, just like humans to grab attention: Study

The social behavior that was previously believed to be exclusive to humans was witnessed in a wild chimpanzee exhibiting an object to its mother purely for sharing.

The chimpanzee was seen in the video coaxing her mother to look at a leaf with her while it was being observed by researchers from institutions such as York and Warwick. The finding implies that in specific social settings, wild chimpanzees can communicate experiences with one another and make comments or gestures about the environment.

However, until now, primates have never been observed engaging in this behavior. All previously observed referential gestures in primates were made to make a request, not just to share attention. Humans start using referential gestures to show or point out objects or events of interest to others in the first year of life.

“People love sharing experiences with each other — social media capitalizes on this trait, and even in our first year of life we start to show others interesting things we’ve found, “said Dr. Claudia Wilke, the study’s lead author from the Department of Psychology at the University of York.

“It has been suggested that ‘sharing for sharing’s sake is a uniquely human trait, but our observation of these wild chimpanzees challenges this. We observed an adult chimpanzee showing her mother a leaf she had been grooming, not because she wanted her to do anything with the leaf, but most likely because she simply wanted her to also look at the leaf.”

Co-author Simon Townsend from the universities of Warwick and Zurich added “Our observations suggest that in specific social circumstances chimps may show each other objects of interest, to share attention about them and that this behavior may not be unique to humans”

The video is of a chimpanzee named ‘Fiona’ in the Kibale national park of Uganda

In Kibale Forest, Uganda, the researchers found a video of an adult female chimpanzee named Fiona showing a leaf to her mother Sutherland.

In order to eliminate potential reasons for the behavior, such as food sharing and initiating grooming or playing, they looked at more than 80 instances of comparable leaf grooming.

The scientists will now carry out additional studies on chimpanzee communities to see whether they can spot other chimpanzees exhibiting this showing and sharing behavior.

The researchers suggest the finding may have consequences for our comprehension of the development of social cognition in humans and what distinguishes human minds from other species. 

While more evidence of this behavior in chimpanzees needs to be found, co-author Professor  Slocombe of the University of York said: “While there is a need to identify further examples of this behavior in chimpanzees, our observations indicate that sharing attention for sharing’s sake is not unique to humans. It has been argued that our ability to share experiences helped us to evolve the cognitive abilities that set us apart from other species, such as our capacity for joint action, cooperation, and language.”

“Our observations raise new questions about why humans share experiences more often than our closest living relatives and whether engaging in this behavior at a higher frequency than other species can still explain the evolution of cognitive functions underpinning human social behavior.”

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