Effects of cage mesh on pointing: hand shapes in chimpanzees (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>) |
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Authors: | David A Leavens Jon Ely William D Hopkins Kim A Bard |
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Institution: | (1) School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, BN1 9QH, UK;(2) Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Atlanta, GA, USA;(3) Agnes Scott College, Atlanta, GA, USA;(4) University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK |
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Abstract: | It has been speculated that cage mesh exerts a shaping influence on reaching behavior by captive apes, which is then misconstrued
as pointing by human observers. Although this notion is clearly falsified by the pointing of captive language-trained apes—who
point in the absence of intervening cage mesh—nevertheless, the degree to which cage mesh might influence pointing hand shapes
by captive great apes in other housing environments remains relatively unexplored. We examined 259 pointing gestures displayed
in archival footage from over 18 h of observation by three nonlanguage-trained chimpanzees housed at a biomedical research
center. We coded points in relation to how close to the boundaries of the diamond-shaped cage mesh their points were displayed.
We found that points with the whole hand were significantly more likely to be displayed away from the mesh boundaries, relative
to points with the index finger or other single-digit points. However, points of each hand shape were displayed at each location,
demonstrating that these physical parameters do not fully account for the number of fingers extended while pointing by chimpanzees. |
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