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Orangutan Pantomime: Elaborating The Message, Anne Russon, Kristin Andrews
Orangutan Pantomime: Elaborating The Message, Anne Russon, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews, PhD
We present an exploratory study of forest-living orangutan pantomiming, i.e. gesturing in which they act out their meaning, focusing on its occurrence, communicative functions, and complexities. Studies show that captive great apes may elaborate messages if communication fails, and isolated reports suggest that great apes occasionally pantomime. We predicted forest-living orangutans would pantomime spontaneously to communicate, especially to elaborate after communication failures. Mining existing databases on free-ranging rehabilitant orangutans’ behaviour identified 18 salient pantomimes. These pantomimes most often functioned as elaborations of failed requests, but also as deceptions and declaratives. Complexities identified include multimodality, re-enactments of past events and several …
Great Ape Mindreading: What’S At Stake?, Kristin Andrews
Great Ape Mindreading: What’S At Stake?, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews, PhD
Humans and other great apes are similar in so many ways. We share an extended immaturity and intense infant-caregiver relationships, group living situations, cultural transmission of technology, and many emotions and cognitive capacities. Yet the communities of nonhuman apes are also very different from human communities. Humans build lasting tools, and store them to use later. We build permanent sleeping and living structures. We cook our food. We have courts of law and prisons and ethics books. There are vast technological differences between humans and nonhuman great apes. What is it that accounts for such a difference? On one account, …