Although cooperative abilities have clearly been shown under experimental 11, 12 and/or natural conditions (for an overview see 13) in both Pan species, some scholars have claimed that their communicative interactions lack the cooperative nature of human communication 1, 2. The resulting studies showed that both species have multifaceted gestural repertoires, which are used as flexible, intentionally produced communicative strategies in a variety of social contexts 8, 9, 10. This hypothesis stirred a considerable amount of research attention concerning general gestural abilities of our two closest living relatives, bonobos ( Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes). One of the predominant theories of language evolution (but see for different theories 6) thus postulates that, phylogenetically, the first fundamental steps towards human communication were not vocalisations, nor a combination of vocal and gestural signals, but were gestures alone 7. The first step into this collective endeavour can already be observed in early infancy, well before the use of first words, when infants start to engage in turn-taking interactional practices embodying gestures to cooperatively share interest in an activity, event or object with other individuals 5. Although there is still an ongoing debate concerning which special principles form the core of this ability, most researchers would agree that it is a fundamentally cooperative enterprise 3, 4. Human communication is one of the most sophisticated signalling systems in the animal kingdom and has often been used to define what it means to be ‘human 2’. “Language didn’t make interactional intelligence possible, it is interactional intelligence that made language possible as a means of communication” 1 ,p.232 Our results thus strengthen the hypothesis that interactional intelligence paved the way to the cooperative endeavour of human language and suggest that social matrices highly impact upon communication styles. While bonobos consistently addressed the recipient via gaze before signal initiation and used so-called overlapping responses, chimpanzees engaged in more extended negotiations, involving frequent response waiting and gestural sequences. Results showed that communicative exchanges in both species resemble cooperative turn-taking sequences in human conversation. Focusing on the communicative function of joint-travel-initiation, we applied parameters of conversation analysis to gestural exchanges between mothers and infants. Here, we revisited this claim by conducting the first systematic comparison of communicative interactions in mother-infant dyads living in two different communities of bonobos ( LuiKotale, DRC Wamba, DRC) and chimpanzees ( Taï South, Côte d’Ivoire Kanyawara, Uganda) in the wild. Although our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, show general cooperative abilities, their communicative interactions seem to lack the cooperative nature of human conversation. It has been suggested that it evolved as part of a larger adaptation of humans’ species-unique forms of cooperation. Human language is a fundamentally cooperative enterprise, embodying fast-paced and extended social interactions.
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