Current Events > Scientists discover that chimpanzees like to share experiences just for fun.

(+) Yeah! (+)

When youre out with your friends, how often do you want to share an experience by saying something like, Wow, look at that?

Now we know that chimpanzees do this tooa behavior once thought unique to humans.
Scientists recently observed a young chimp nagging its mom for attention for the sole purpose of showing her a leaffor no reason other than to say something like, Look, isnt this a cool leaf?

In their study, the scientists called it declarative referential gesturing, showing something for the sake that another chimp can see it, and no more. They observed this in a mother-daughter pairing at the Ngobo Chimp Community at Kibale National Park in Uganda.

Critically, she didnt seem to want her mom to do anything with the leaf. She seems to be showing it just for the sake of showing it. Its like, look, look, this is cool, isnt it? And that is very humanlike and something that we thought was fairly unique to our species, study coauthor Katie Slocombe, a professor of psychology at the University of York in the United Kingdom

They contrasted this incident with the leaf to 84 other events all centered around the use of leaves, which the scientists detail are often the focus of groomers.

Chimps tend to pluck leaves from trees while grooming each other, which garners a lot of attention in the community. The generally-accepted belief is that since it happens during inter-indivudal grooming, they use the leaf as a sort of petri-dish to inspect the parasites they pull off each other.

Always however, with the study of our closest relatives, the video footage is the really convicncing argument. The video of daughter Fiona plucking a leaf and showing it to her mother Sutherland is a gesture we have all seen a hundred million times in the age of social mediaa youth passing a phone infront of anothers face to direct their attention towards it.

When Fiona was doing this, (Sutherland) didnt really seem interested; she wasnt watching and wasnt giving her any attention. Fiona is then showing her the leaf to say, look at it, Slocombe said.

She is really persistent with trying to get her mom to look at it, and its only when her mom really visibly dropped her whole head to orient to the leaf that (Fiona) then seems satisfied.

The study is the first recorded observation of this behavior in the wild and in any other animal, and Slocombe et al. hope their work will encourage the community to keep their eyes peeled for more displays like this so that a body of observational evidence can emerge.

Full Article: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/chimpanzees-share-experiences-with-each-other-just-because-a-trait-once-thought-to-be-only-human-watch/

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/7/9/AAZiH8AAD7MP.jpg

When a human says "Here check out this leaf" they're trying to share something very different

When I read "wow, look at that" the first thing that came to my head is that soyjack pointing meme except it was 2 monkeys pointing at something.

Irony posted...

When I read "wow, look at that" the first thing that came to my head is that soyjack pointing meme except it was 2 monkeys pointing at something.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/8/1/AAfXWzAAD7MR.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/9/7/AAfSRzAAD7Mh.jpg

VampireCoyote posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/9/7/AAfSRzAAD7Mh.jpg

I don't get it

UnfairRepresent posted...

I don't get it

Dale: You know, I bet it's a ~Human Conspiracy~. You see, we weren't the first sapient intelligent apes. Everyone thinks humans are a myth or extinct, but they're still around, pulling the strings!

Bill: But I've never seen a human...

Dale: Yes, because that's what they want you to *see*!

Hank: Dale, stop being a jackass.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Well they are animals