Chimpanzees gesture back and forth quickly like in human conversations

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1051557
When people are having a conversation, they
rapidly take turns speaking and sometimes
even interrupt. Now, researchers who have
collected the largest ever dataset of
chimpanzee “conversations” have found that
they communicate back and forth using
gestures following the same rapid-fire
pattern. The findings are reported on
July 22 in the journal Current Biology.
“While human languages are incredibly
diverse, a hallmark we all share is that
our conversations are structured with
fast-paced turns of just 200 milliseconds
on average,” said Catherine Hobaiter
(@NakedPrimate) at the University of
St Andrews, UK.
“We found that the timing of chimpanzee
gesture and human conversational turn-taking
is similar and very fast, which suggests
that similar evolutionary mechanisms are
driving these social, communicative
interactions,” says Gal Badihi
(@Gal_Badihi), the study’s first author.
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