New study has shown that chimpanzees mostly uses their right hands when communicating with other chimpanzees. This indicate that their left side of the brain does most of the work for regulating and expressing their ways of communicating. Understanding their gestures leading to suggestion for another similarity between chimpanzees and human, for most language skills human uses the left side of the brain. This could be another reason why chimpanzees are extremely close to human. Chimpanzees learns as quickly as human, the only thing is that they can't express our language.
Scientists conducted the experiment at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, where they observed and recorded 70 captive chimpanzees for their behaviors and their gestures when communicating. They were focusing especially on chimpanzees gestures and how these gestures are produce under different social situations. William Hopkins from Anges Scott College who was the supervisor in the study said that they found the chimpanzees used the left side of the brain to control their right hands when gesturing.
Another idea that researchers believe is that speech was evolved from gestures. They said that the gestures in apes shares the same features as in human language and others properties.
Tiffany Phan
12/1/09
It's interesting that chimps use their right hands to communicate which correlates to the left side of the brain. Is it seen that gestures involved with communications in humans are also with the right hand? Does this have any connection with right hand/left hand dominance?
ReplyDelete-Tricia Carlson
It would be interesting to see if chimps used their right hands to paint or hold pencils. Did it mention if there were some chimps that used their left hands more? It would be interesting if the percentages of right to left handedness was close to the same in chimps as it is in humans.
ReplyDelete-Sara Ku
This article is very interesting. I have a lot of experience with monkeys, but have never noticed them using their right hand more than there left hand when communicating. The monkey's I have worked with have a hand bias for reaching for objects. I wonder if these two things have anything in common?
ReplyDelete-Samantha Babcock
I wonder if monkey social units discriminate against left-handedness if indeed it does exist in a similar way. Assuming it does, I'm just saying, poor lefties. Baseball mitts, scissors, credit card machine swipers, position of door handles...it's just not right. I'm a right-handed sympathizer.
ReplyDeleteJess Bouchard (1)
It is really amazing to see the similarities that chimps have with humans. This is just another one of those similarities. What is it exactly that decides whether or not a being is left or right hand dominant anyways? Why is it that right handedness is so common and left isn't? I never really thought about that phenomenon but this article really makes me think about it instead of just accepting it as the fact.
ReplyDeleteThis is so interesting. I've heard that the left side of the brain controls the motions of the right side of the body, and that the right side of the brain controls the motions of the left side of the body, but I didn't know that the left side of the brain is used for controlling gestures and the right side was used for communication. Are the patterns of communication and brain use identical in humans and chimps or just very close?
ReplyDelete-Posted by Sarah Benjamin
i thought this was a really cool entry. it was interesting to hear how they used there right hands to communicate things. i wonder if this pattern of using the left side of the brain in chimps is the same in humans or close? cool article tho!
ReplyDelete-Stephen C