himpanzees produce a “hunting bark” to call members of their group and coordinate a hunt, new research suggests.
Like humans, the animals use communication to coordinate their cooperative behavior, such as during hunting.
When chimpanzees produce a specific sound known as the “hunting bark,” they recruit more group members for the hunt and catch their prey more effectively, the research suggests.
dr. Simon Townsend of the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick and a professor at the University of Zurich (UZH) helped lead the study.
He said: “Communication plays a key role in coordinating complex collaborative acts in humans, and this is the first indication that vocal communication could also facilitate group collaboration in our closest living relatives.”
Chimpanzees don’t just forage for fruit, and will occasionally look for opportunities to get some protein-rich meat.
However, their prey is agile monkeys that spend a lot of time in the canopy, and to catch them, the great apes benefit from having companions on the hunt.
Scientists have discovered for the first time that communication is the key to recruiting group members to join the hunt.
Joseph Mine, a PhD student in the Comparative Linguistics Department at UZH, led the research.
He said: “Chimpanzees that produce hunting barks provide information to people nearby about their motivation to hunt.
“This information can convince unwilling individuals to get involved, increasing the overall chances of success.”
Researchers from the University of Warwick, the University of Zurich and Tufts University analyzed more than 300 hunting events recorded over the past 25 years among the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Uganda.
Group hunting in dense tropical rainforest where visibility is limited can be challenging, so vocal communication allows for more efficient group work.
“Remarkably, after the production of hunting barks, we saw more fighters entering the field, a greater speed at the start of the chase and a shorter time to make the first catch,” said co-final author Zarin Machanda of Tufts University, who is studying the lead. head of the Kanyawara chimpanzee project.
Researchers say it’s generally accepted that communication and collaboration are closely related and evolved together in humans.
However, it was not known how far back in man’s evolutionary past this relationship between group collaboration and communication can be traced.
Joseph Mine concluded: “Our results indicate that the relationship between vocal communication and group-level collaboration is ancient.
“This link seems to have been around for at least seven million years, since our last common ancestor with chimpanzees.”
The findings are published in the journal Science Advances.