Gupta Shreejata, Sinha Anindya
National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India; Department of Psychology, University of York, United Kingdom.
National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India; Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore, India; Dhole's Den Research Foundation, Bandipur National Park, India.
Behav Processes. 2019 Nov;168:103956. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2019.103956. Epub 2019 Sep 4.
Nonhuman primate gestures are believed to be crucial evolutionary precursors of human language. Comparative studies on primate gestures in an evolutionary framework have, however, remained largely restricted to the great apes and the potential flexibility and richness of gestural communication in monkeys, especially in the wild, continue to be virtually unknown. In this paper, we followed several criteria, adapted from ape gesture studies, to identify gestures and evaluate their contexts of usage in the repertoire of wild bonnet macaques Macaca radiata in the Bandipur National Park of southern India. This report is the first of its kind to systematically identify gestures in any wild, non-ape species, thus providing a platform for comparative studies across primate taxa, particularly in our efforts to trace out the phylogenetic origins of language-like markers in the primate lineage, earlier than in the great apes.
非人类灵长类动物的手势被认为是人类语言至关重要的进化先驱。然而，在进化框架下对灵长类动物手势的比较研究，在很大程度上仍局限于大猩猩，而猴子，尤其是野生猴子的手势交流的潜在灵活性和丰富性，实际上仍然鲜为人知。在本文中，我们遵循了一些从猿类手势研究中改编而来的标准，来识别手势并评估其在印度南部班迪普尔国家公园野生圆帽猕猴（Macaca radiata）行为库中的使用情境。本报告是同类研究中首个系统识别任何野生非猿类物种手势的报告，从而为跨灵长类分类群的比较研究提供了一个平台，特别是在我们努力追溯灵长类谱系中类似语言标记的系统发育起源时，比大猩猩更早。
