Fröhlich Marlen, Bartolotta Natasha, Fryns Caroline, Wagner Colin, Momon Laurene, Jaffrezic Marvin, Mitra Setia Tatang, Schuppli Caroline, van Noordwijk Maria A, van Schaik Carel P
Department of Anthropology, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
iScience. 2021 Oct 16;24(11):103304. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103304. eCollection 2021 Nov 19.
Whether nonhuman species can change their communicative repertoire in response to socio-ecological environments has critical implications for communicative innovativeness prior to the emergence of human language, with its unparalleled productivity. Here, we use a comparative sample of wild and zoo-housed orangutans of two species () to assess the effect of the wild-captive contrast on repertoires of gestures and facial expressions. We find that repertoires on both the individual and population levels are larger in captive than in wild settings, regardless of species, age class, or sampling effort. In the more sociable Sumatran species, dominant use of signals toward single outcomes was also higher in captive settings. We thus conclude that orangutans exposed to more sociable and terrestrial conditions evince behavioral plasticity, in that they produce additional innate or innovated signals that are highly functionally specific. These findings suggest a latent capacity for innovativeness in these apes' communicative repertoires.
非人类物种是否能够根据社会生态环境改变其交流方式，这对于人类语言出现之前具有无与伦比生产力的交流创新能力具有至关重要的意义。在这里，我们使用两个物种的野生和圈养红毛猩猩的比较样本，来评估野生与圈养环境的差异对手势和面部表情方式的影响。我们发现，无论物种、年龄类别或抽样力度如何，圈养环境中个体和群体层面的交流方式都比野生环境中的更多。在社交性更强的苏门答腊物种中，圈养环境下针对单一结果的信号主导使用率也更高。因此，我们得出结论，处于更具社交性和陆地环境中的红毛猩猩表现出行为可塑性，因为它们会产生额外的、具有高度功能特异性的先天或创新信号。这些发现表明这些猿类的交流方式具有潜在的创新能力。
