Human activity led to the loss of all adult males in a group – and with them a part of their dialect.
To find it out, a group of researchers began to collect observation data on Four Western Western chimpanzee communities (Pan troglodytes verus) neighboring each other in Taï National Park, on the Ivory Coast, watching them from morning to night and recording everything that seemed important.
According to, what they found was related to sex, more specifically, the Different ways the different groups of chimpanzees tried to get sex.
While humans can try to seduce someone with a terrible hitch phrase, male chimpanzees have other ways to attract female attention. These include the auditory gestureswhich consist of emitting a sound to communicate something – in this case your desire to be with it.
“We identified four types of communicative gestures: “Keep on the heel”, “hit the nodes on their fingers”, “cut the leaves” and “shake the branches”, used by male chimpanzees to attract females to mate with them, “he said Mathieu Malherbefirst author.
The team also found that these four gestures were not used consistently Among the different groups of chimpanzees of the National Park – Each had their own dialect.
“Between 2013 and 2024, we found differences in the frequency of use of these communicative gestures between communities of neighboring chimpanzees, but also among populations throughout Africa,” Malherbe explained.
Analysis of other data that covered 45 years revealed that the gestures also used can change over time. Given that female chimpanzees travel between groups, this led the investigators to conclude in their article, published in, that these different gestural dialects “are probably socially influenced“Providing culture tests.
“The consistent use of the same forms of mating signing within communities, but different forms of signaling between neighboring communities that experience a regular genetic flow through female migration, suggests socially learned dialects on chimpanzees, evidence that was rarely demonstrated before “, he said Catherine Crockfordone of the main authors of the study.
However, the team also found that, in one of the groups, a gesture seems to have disappeared completely. “Currently, the northern group’s males, one of the four communities, do not use the gesture of ‘beating with their fingertips’ 20 years ago, although all northern group males used this gesture before 2004,” he said Liran samunisenior author.
The authors associated this fact with human activity in the area. “Since 1999, the Northern Community has lost many members, including all adult males, due to human pressure, with the Last adult male was killed by a stealth hunter in 2008.
Over a eight-year period (2004-2011), there were no two adult males Together in the group, limiting the competition between males and the availability of adult males to model the use of signs, ”the investigators wrote. “This demographic decline coincided with the apparent loss of the gesture of beating with their fingertips in the northern group“.
Given the importance of social learning and the fact that “the horizontal transmission of cultural knowledge is a powerful mechanism for evolutionary change”, researchers said that their discoveries underlineevidence to avoid greater loss of chimpanzees culture by human action.
“There is an urgent need to integrate the preservation of chimpanzees culture in conservation strategies,” he said Roman Wittigsenior author, adding Malherbe that “this initiative is crucial not just for Survival of the speciesbut also for understanding the Our own evolutionary history“.
Teresa Oliveira Campos, Zap //
