Humans should be able to interpret ape signs

SCIENTISTS have claimed that humans should be able to understand a system of gestures employed by apes.

The team of researchers, led by Dr Richard Byrne at St Andrews University, have been studying ape gestures for the past decade in order to better understand our evolutionary ancestors.

In his recent paper, Where Have All the (Ape) Gestures Gone?’, he suggests humans may haveinherited gestures available to them.

Dr Byrne said: “We predict that – despite appearances – humans have the potential to make and understand all of the gestures that are shared between chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas.”

He added: “The ape gestures are not like words – in being socially acquired with dialect and different languages – they are typical of animal signals in that they must be part of the species’ make-up.”

There may be around 60-70 examples of such signs, and we probably understand some such as sticking an arm out and flicking the wrist to indicate ‘go away’. Dr Byrne proposes that while humans may possess these innate gestures, their usage was supplanted by our ability to communicate more efficiently using words.

He said: “If the chimpanzee, the bonobo, the gorilla and the orangutan share gestures, those gestures must have evolved quite a long time ago, when they shared ancestry, which means that’s part of our ancestry too.

“So we started thinking: why don’t we use all these gestures? Do we know them? Do we ever use them?”

He added: “We predict that deliberate experimentation would reveal a latent ability to recognise and interpret ‘ape gestures’ in naive humans.”