Chimpanzees Take Turns in Fast-Paced Conversations, Just Like Humans Do

A new study finds the average chimpanzee response time in gestured conversations is 120 milliseconds, which isn’t that far from the human average of 200 milliseconds

Margherita Bassi
Correspondent

July 24, 2024 2:42 p.m.



Two chimpanzees at the Budongo Conservation Field Station in Uganda Adrian Soldati

When humans have conversations, we take turns speaking, sometimes even interrupting each other. Now, a study published in Current Biology on Monday reports that chimpanzees follow a similar communication pattern structured around back-and-forth, fast-paced turns—albeit with gestures rather than speaking.

“Human conversation follows very strict rules of turn-taking that are consistent across cultures and languages,” Gal Badihi, an animal behavior researcher at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and first author of the study, tells the Guardian’s Tanya Procyshyn. “We started to wonder whether chimpanzee communication was governed by its own rules, or if the rules are similar to human conversation.”

Chimpanzee gestures are largely meant to convey requests, with “groom me,” “follow me,” “give me” or “stop it” being common commands. The researchers witnessed a variety of gestured interactions, such as chimps asking to change spots during grooming sessions. Once, a chimp named Ursus gave a reassuring tap to a chimp named Monica when she reached her hand out after a quarrel. In another instance, a male chimp repeatedly made “go away” gestures as a female asked for some meat from an antelope he had killed.

To explore patterns in this communication, the team of scientists collected footage of 8,559 gestures from 252 individuals in five chimp communities in eastern Africa, assembling the largest dataset of chimpanzee conversations ever made. They found that 14 percent of the recorded interactions included at least one response to a gesture, while some included as many as seven back-and-forth responses.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/chimpanzees-take-turns-in-fast-paced-conversations-just-like-humans-do-180984763/