Chimpanzee mothers, but not fathers, influence offspring vocal–visual communicative behavior

Abstract

Face-to-face communication in humans typically consists of a combination of vocal utterances and body language. Similarly, our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, produce multiple vocal signals alongside a wide array of manual gestures, body postures and facial expressions. In humans, the ontogenetic development of communicative behavior is known to be heavily influenced by the child’s primary caretakers. In chimpanzees, the extent to which communicative behavior is learned, as opposed to genetically inherited, remains openly debat Show more