Journal of Comparative Psychology © 2013 American Psychological Association

2014, Vol. 128, No. 1, 82– 87 0735-7036/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0033757

Deictic Gesturing in Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)?

Some Possible Cases

Catherine Hobaiter David A. Leavens

University of St Andrews University of Sussex

Richard W. Byrne
University of St Andrews
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Referential pointing is important in the development of language comprehension in the child and is often
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

considered a uniquely human capacity. Nonhuman great apes do point in captivity, usually for a human
audience, but this has been interpreted as an interaction pattern learned from human caretakers, not
indicative of natural deictic ability. In contrast, spontaneous pointing for other apes is almost unknown
among wild ape populations, supporting doubts as to whether apes naturally have any capacity to point
referentially. Here the authors describe and illustrate 4 cases of gestures by juvenile chimpanzees in the
Sonso chimpanzee community in Budongo, Uganda, that, at some level, may appear to be deictic and
referential. The authors discuss the possible reasons why chimpanzees, if they possess a capacity for
referential pointing, do not use it more frequently.

Keywords: pointing, chimpanzees, referential communication, gesture

Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0033757.supp

Pointing has been long characterized in the scientific literature
as a human species-specific gesture, reflecting a uniquely human
cognitive capacity for nonverbal reference (Franco & Butterworth,
1996; Tomasello, Carpenter, & Liszkowski, 2007). Pointing is an
inherently referential act, as it directs the attention of a commu-
nicative partner to a specific locus; thus, a referential triangle is
created between two communicative partners and a referent, and
each element in the triangle is manifested in a shared, public space.
The “canonical” human pointing action has been described as a
stereotypical gesture involving extension of the arm and the index
This article was published Online First September 16, 2013.
Catherine Hobaiter, Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution
and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology, University of
St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland; David A. Leavens, School of Psychol-
ogy, University of Sussex, Sussex, UK; Richard W. Byrne, Centre for
Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution and Scottish Primate Research
Group, School of Psychology, University of St Andrews.
The fieldwork of Catherine Hobaiter was generously supported by grants
from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Thomas and Margaret Roddan
Trust and the Russell Trust. We thank the staff of the Budongo Conser-
vation Field Station, especially Amati Stephen, and the BCFS project
founder Vernon Reynolds and its current scientific director Klaus Zuber-
bühler for allowing us to work at the site. For permission to work in
Uganda, we thank the Ugandan National Council for Science and Tech-
nology, the Presidents Office, the Uganda Wildlife Authority and the
Uganda Forest Authority. We thank Kim A. Bard, University of Ports-
mouth, for technical assistance with the human pointing example.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Richard
W. Byrne, Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution and Scottish
Primate Research Group, School of Psychology, University of St Andrews,
St Andrews, KY16 9JP, Scotland. E-mail: rwb@st-andrews.ac.uk
82
finger and adduction of the remaining fingers (e.g., Eibl-
Eibesfeldt, 1989; Povinelli & Davis, 1994). However, it has be-
come increasingly appreciated that pointing with all fingers ex-
tended (whole-hand pointing, e.g., Leavens & Hopkins, 1999) is
commonly displayed in both Western and non-Western human
populations (see Wilkins, 2003). Indeed, when Iverson and
Goldin-Meadow (1997, 2001) blindfolded human participants,
they displayed much more pointing with the whole hand than with
their index fingers. When pointing with index finger or whole hand
has been directly compared in developmental studies, there is little
to distinguish them: Children vocalize at similar rates whether
pointing with their index fingers or with their whole hands, and
they display similar rates of accompanying gaze alternation be-
tween the referents of their points and their communicative part-
ners (Leung & Rheingold, 1981; Murphy & Messer, 1977). Mur-
phy and Messer (1997) concluded that, in their sample of 9- and
14-month-olds, pointing with the whole hands and with the index
fingers “showed no apparent functional differences” (p. 347). For
these reasons, contemporary researchers now include pointing with
the whole hand as an example of pointing in human prelinguistic
samples (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2002; Liszkowski et al., 2006;
O’Neill, 1996).
Referential pointing requires the cognitive capacity to recognize
and accommodate another individual’s perspective and to direct
their attention to external objects. Considerable evidence suggests
that this cognitive capacity fosters language comprehension in our
species (see review by Colonnesi, Stams, Koster, and Noom,
2010). This makes intuitive sense, because a pointing gesture can
help a language learner bring a referent into its visual field at the
same time the referent’s label is uttered by a language-competent
communicative partner, promoting a visual-auditory association
 DEICTIC GESTURES IN WILD CHIMPANZEES?
between a referent and its name (Butterworth, 2003). Indeed,
theorists have speculated that pointing may have evolved to foster
language acquisition in humans (Butterworth, 2003). Pointing is
often seen as a human-unique adaptation for establishing refer-
ence, implicating the cognitive ability to understand others’ per-
spectives (Baron-Cohen, 1995; Povinelli, Bering, & Giambrone,
2003) and the motivation to share interest and attention to distant
objects (Tomasello et al., 2007). Thus, a substantial body of theory
characterizes pointing as diagnostic of a primary cognitive/moti-
vational discontinuity between humans and our nearest living
relatives, the great apes.
The idea of pointing as a uniquely human adaptation appears to
be refuted by demonstrations that apes in captivity point, some-
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times without any explicit training to do so (e.g., Bodamer &
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Gardner, 2002; Call & Tomasello, 1994; Gómez, 2007; Krause
& Fouts, 1997; Leavens & Hopkins, 1998; Leavens, Hopkins, &
Bard, 1996; Leavens, Hopkins, & Thomas, 2004; Savage-
Rumbaugh, 1986). However, it may be that pointing by apes and
humans is behaviorally similar but cognitively distinct: ape point-
ing that has been reported in captive situations may not depend on
understanding the triangle of reference, but result from human
influence. Consistent with the uniqueness of human pointing, it has
been claimed that apes do not point between themselves but only
for humans; and apes do not point at all in the wild (e.g., Povinelli
et al., 2003; Tomasello et al., 2007).
These generalizations are not without challenge. Pointing has
been described and videotaped among language-trained chimpan-
zees, Pan troglodytes, by Savage-Rumbaugh (1986) and among
non-language-trained orangutans, Pongo pygmaeus, chimpanzees,
and bonobos, Pan paniscus, by Pelé et al. (2009); but such pointing
by apes in captivity has been seen as a direct consequence of their
exposure to and adoption of human species-specific pointing (Moll
& Tomasello, 2007; Povinelli et al., 2003; Tomasello, 2006). In the
wild, a single case of pointing has been described among wild
bonobos by Veà and Sabater-Pi (1998), and a scratching gesture
described for the chimpanzee that was considered referential (Pika
& Mitani, 2006).
If wild apes can point, then it becomes a problem to explain why
they (virtually) never do. One suggestion is that pointing only
emerges when a child is unable directly to obtain an object, making
them reliant upon others to act on the world for them (Leavens et
al., 1996, 2005; Leavens, 2004); because both human infants and
captive apes spend so much time in conditions of restraint, they
need tactics to manipulate others to retrieve otherwise unattainable
objects. On this hypothesis, the difference is seen as situational
rather than species-specific, but the prevailing consensus is the
opposite. In a recent review Moll and Tomasello (2007) stated that
“there has not been a single reliable documentation of any scientist
in any part of the world of one ape pointing for another” (p. 643).
There is thus significant debate as to whether apes do or do not
have the capacity to point referentially; and especially over
whether apes point for each other or only with human caretakers,
and whether the absence of pointing in wild apes is entirely due to
environmental factors. Hence, observation of spontaneous deictic
gestures between free-living great ape individuals is of theoretical
importance.
Here we present four cases of possible whole-hand pointing
observed in wild chimpanzees and discuss the circumstances under
which they were produced. Within a systematic observational
83
study of gestural communication in a wild chimpanzee community
at Budongo, Uganda (Hobaiter & Byrne, 2011), we isolated and
examined all video clips containing object-related begging for
examples of potentially referential gestures. We paid specific
attention to reaching gestures that might function as deictic ges-
tures.
Method
Data Collection
Observations were made on all chimpanzees within the Sonso
community during three field periods between October 2007 and
August, 2009: a total of 266 observation days. Primary data were
recorded between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., on a schedule of 3 days
on, 1 day off, 3 days on, 2 days off. As the subjects were free-ranging
wild chimpanzees it was not always possible to maintain contin-
uous visual contact during this time. All social interactions that
were judged to have any potential for gestural communication
were recorded on miniDV using a Sony Handycam (DCR-HC-55).
Digital videotapes were transferred to an Apple Macbook Pro
computer and scanned to locate episodes that apparently involved
gestural communication.
Gestures were defined as discrete, mechanically ineffective
physical movements of the body observed during periods of in-
tentional communication (see Hobaiter & Byrne, 2011, for further
details). All recorded reach gestures made in the context of beg-
ging were selected for detailed analysis: a reach gesture was
defined as an arm and hand extension with the hand in an open
position; a gesture produced in the direction of the recipient was
classed as a begging-reach.
Differentiation of Triadic From Dyadic Gestures
Circumstances for detecting referential gestures in wild chim-
panzees do not occur on a regular basis. It is critical to distinguish
between pointing toward the object but directed to a potentially
helpful third-party (triadic); and a straightforward begging-reach
gesture to the individual with the object (dyadic). Chimpanzees in
possession of a highly desirable food source, such as meat or
preferred fruits, generally keep possession of this by holding it and
carrying it with them at all times. It therefore becomes extremely
difficult to distinguish between a dyadic reach directed to the
individual holding the meat and a triadic point to the object they
are holding. However, when a separate individual is involved, as
the third-party to whom the communication is directed, it becomes
possible to clearly distinguish cases of triadic communication.
We therefore adopted the conservative approach of requiring
that the target object (and its possessor) be spatially distinct from
the recipient to whom the communication was directed. Thus, not
only must an individual monopolize a highly desirable food
source, but they must be apart from the individual to whom the
gestures are directed to create a clear triangle of reference, with the
possibility of gaze alternation between the unreachable food and
the potential helper.
Seventy-nine video clips contained object-related begging ges-
tures, the majority (62; 78%) during periods of meat consumption
after a hunt. Within all of these episodes the individual monopo-
lizing the meat held on to it, and all observed cases of communi-
 84 HOBAITER, LEAVENS, AND BYRNE
cation were targeted toward the individual with the meat; thus,
although triadic gestures in this context may have occurred, they
were not readily distinguished from dyadic ones.
In Raphia farinifera feeding, by contrast, the decaying pith of
dead palm trees is accessed through a small hole gnawed through
the tough outer bark of the main trunk, so although a single
individual can easily monopolize access, the object is too large to
hold or carry. In this situation, we observed cases where the
gesturing at the food was directed to a third individual, spatially at
or near 180° away from either the target object or the individual
monopolizing the resource.
Results
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Twelve bouts of Raphia feeding were recorded: five involving
only single individuals or mothers with offspring. In the remaining
seven bouts, parties contained a juvenile and its mother, but also a
dominant individual unrelated to the others. In one of these bouts,
three cases of potentially referential whole-hand points by a juve-
nile were identified; a fourth example that occurred outside of the
expected feeding context is also described (see Supplemental
Materials: Videos S1-S4; to assist in the location of the gestures,
which can be very fast or produced while the camera was panning,
the footage immediately either side of the gesture described has
been slowed down). All of these apparently deictic gestures were
directed toward an object spatially distant from the recipient to
whom the communication was targeted, with the palm fully or
partially pronated (held downward), and accompanied by gaze
alternation between the desired object and a potentially helpful
other.
16th December 2008 Night to Nambi (see
Supplemental Video S1)
Night (5-year-old female) is peering into the camera held by
Catherine Hobaiter who is sitting filming her; she moves closer,
apparently to examine the camera, and then starts in apparent fear
and darts away having apparently seen a movement in the camera
lens. As she moves back to her mother, Nambi, she turns and (at
8-s point in clip) reaches out with her left hand, palm down, fingers
extended, toward either Catherine Hobaiter or the camera, looking
in the direction of CH or the camera but glancing back at Nambi,
who looks up before resuming self-grooming. This juvenile is
unique among the community for being particularly interested in
items the researchers carry, which clearly represent objects of
desire to her.
19th June 2008 Monika to Melissa (see Supplemental
Video S2)
Monika (5 year-old female) is sitting in center frame in front of
the tree; two dominant individuals—the alpha male and his mother
(and her youngest baby)—are to the right of frame, feeding at the
hole at the base of the Raphia palm that allows access to the
decaying pith. Monika approaches the tree, followed by her mother
Melissa. Melissa is initially off camera to the left of the tree,
approximately 5 m away. Monika, whose attention is focused on
the tree, glances between the dominant individuals and her mother,
the palm-down, whole-hand extension toward the hole in the
Raphia palm occurs at 12 s; right hand (on the right hand edge of
the frame, most clearly visible when arm is withdrawn at 16 s);
note that while she is looking at the tree she repeatedly looks back
to monitor Melissa’s response (once while the gesture is in place
at 13 s, and again after the gesture has ended at 19 and 22 s). At
the end of the clip it can be seen that Melissa has approached to
approximately 2.5 m from the tree.
19th June 2008 Monika to Melissa (see Supplemental
Video S3)
This follows the previous case, but Monika has now moved over
to Melissa; both are looking toward the dominant individuals
feeding at the tree. Monika moves back toward the tree where the
same dominant individuals are still feeding, she looks at her
mother while whimpering and reaches across her body with her
right hand extended toward the hole in the Raphia at 10 s into the
clip. Melissa gets up and moves closer but sits back down still at
approximately 0.5 m from the tree; they are now very close to the
dominant individuals who would have been unlikely to tolerate a
direct approach to this distance from the juvenile female alone.
Shortly after this clip, both individuals approached a little closer
but as the alpha male moved position, Monika screamed in appar-
ent fear and everyone, including the dominant individuals, moved
away.
19th June 2008 Monika to Melissa (see Supplemental
Video S4)
After the disturbance Monika and her mother approach the tree
again, but Melissa seems reluctant to approach and sits down.
Monika appears to combine two gestures: (a) a “reach” to Melissa
with her right arm, palm clearly pronated, whimpering, and (b) an
extension of her left arm, palm held vertically, toward the tree (at
3-s point); note the visual check to the tree at 5 s. For a detailed
description of these two gestures see Supplemental information:
multimedia files. Melissa approaches Monika, allows her to climb
on her belly (despite her being 5-year-old at the time) and carries
her to within 2 m of the tree. Monika then climbs off and is able
to approach and feed.
Discussion
Reports of gestural pointing in wild chimpanzees are vanish-
ingly rare: this is a striking difference from the now substantial
body of evidence from captivity (Bodamer, 2002; Call & Toma-
sello, 1994; Gómez, 2007; Krause & Fouts, 1997; Leavens &
Hopkins, 1998; Leavens et al., 1996, 2004; Savage-Rumbaugh,
1986). Most of these quite numerous reports are of apes pointing
for human observers: In some cases they were specifically trained
in pointing, and in all they would likely have experienced rein-
forcement of any spontaneous pointing behavior. However, the
literature also includes a few cases of apes pointing for other apes
in captivity (de Waal, 1982; Pelé et al., 2009; Savage-Rumbaugh,
1986). In the current study, we have identified four possible cases
of deictic gestures within bouts of intentional communication. We
are aware that these observations may be interpreted in several
ways; indeed our primary motivation is to make these data avail-
able for evaluation by the wider community, particularly in the
 DEICTIC GESTURES IN WILD CHIMPANZEES?
context of how similar actions would be coded from human
subjects. These cases all involved extension of the arm and fingers
toward a desirable but unavailable object (a food object monopo-
lized by a dominant chimpanzee, or an unusual object held by a
researcher), directed to a spatially distinct potential helper (the
mother chimpanzee), accompanied by gaze alternation between the
recipient and object, while the hand was held palm near-to or fully
downward and directed at the object. Closely similar actions in
human infants have been classified as whole-hand pointing
(Brooks & Meltzoff, 2002; Liszkowski et al., 2006; O’Neill, 1996;
see Supplemental Video S5).
Given the previous absence of pointing in wild chimpanzees,
however, we must consider whether there might be any alternative
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explanation for the observations. In particular, can we be quite sure
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that the gestures do not represent dyadic communication? After all,
in all four cases there was a potential recipient located in the
direction in which the reach was extended (chimpanzee or human)
and whole-hand reaches are used dyadically by chimpanzees to
beg for food, to solicit affiliation, approach, or sexual contact, to
solicit carrying by infants, and to start play (Hobaiter, 2010).
However, critically, in dyadic communication the reach is ex-
tended toward the recipient with the palm typically held facing
upward (e.g., Goodall, 1986; Hobaiter & Byrne, 2011) and the
indications of intentional use occur within this signaler-recipient
pair; that is, the recipient to whom the reach is extended toward
(see Hobaiter & Byrne, 2011). In contrast, although each of the
four cases included indications of intentional use between the
signaler and a recipient, these occurred between the infant and
the potential helper (i.e., response monitoring was of the potential
helper’s behavior, as well as other gestures given within the same
bout of communication being directed toward this individual);
whereas the reaches were given with the palm held partially or
fully down and extended toward both the individual creating a
problem (chimpanzee or human) and the desirable object—at or
near 180° away from the potential helper to whom the communi-
cation was targeted. Most tellingly, in three of the four cases
(Supplemental Videos S2–S4), the silent pointing gestures were
out of view for the problem individual, or only within the edge of
their peripheral vision, while in full view for the potential helper.
The specific selection of gestures to match the audience’s state of
attention, including the use of silent gestures to attentive recipients
who are able to receive them, is a well-established fact of gestural
communication in all species of great ape (Call & Tomasello,
2007; Hobaiter & Byrne, 2011; Genty, Breuer, Hobaiter, & Byrne,
2009; Liebal, Pika, & Tomasello, 2004, 2006; Tanner & Byrne,
1996; Tomasello et al., 1994); and signalers go so far as to move
around into the recipient’s field of view before producing silent
gestures (Liebal et al., 2004). Moreover, in Supplemental Video
S1, Night’s extended arm is directed to the location in which she
has had an intense emotional response— hence, the apparent ges-
ture is not random with respect to an unfolding episode of startle
and retreat. In the four cases described here, the targeting of
gestural communication toward one recipient, a potential helper, in
combination with a reach extending obviously away from this
individual, is strikingly different from the way in which begging-
reach gestures are produced within simple dyadic interactions.
Leavens et al. (2005) argued that the development of pointing
results from the combination of two environmental factors, regu-
larly experienced by both captive chimpanzees and young humans
85
but not by wild chimpanzees: physical barriers to the ability to
obtain desirable objects and a reliable history of provisioning. The
implication is that pointing is simply not an effective strategy for
wild chimpanzees, as they do not frequently experience physical
restrictions or regular provisioning. We suggest, however, that
there may be equivalent environmental circumstances that promote
the (rarely observed) use of deictic gestures in wild chimpanzees.
Wild chimpanzees experience few physical barriers, but other
factors can restrict access to desirable objects. Some foods can be
monopolized by a single individual, creating a significant social
barrier: The presence of a dominant, unrelated chimpanzee mo-
nopolizing a particular resource may be a greater barrier to a young
chimpanzee’s access than bars on a cage. Chimpanzees may tol-
erate social faux pas of infants, and adults can overcome social
barriers by offering sexual access or social support (Gomes &
Boesch, 2009; Mitani & Watts, 2001): Juvenile chimpanzees have
less social currency to offer. To overcome this challenge, a juve-
nile’s only resource is another chimpanzee: All our data concern
juveniles communicating to their mothers.
Theoretical interpretations of pointing, in both humans and
nonhumans, range from appeals to representational cognitive pro-
cesses that mediate these deictic behaviors (e.g., Tomasello et al.,
2007), on the one hand; to postulation of learning influences on the
perceived affordances of the environment to support triadic com-
munication (e.g., Leavens et al., 2005), on the other. Consistent
with the former, the idea of pointing as a reflection of human-
unique representational capacities, we observed only four in-
stances of possible deictic gesturing in 266 days of observation;
although we note that, in fact, this frequency is comparable to that
of several other gesture types (Hobaiter & Byrne, 2011). It re-
mains, therefore, possible (as an anonymous reviewer noted) that
our observations might be attributable to measurement error, and
simply reflect the rare coincidence of two functionally independent
actions: (a) arm extension toward an entity in the environment,
with the hand oriented contrary to a normal reach for some
unknown reason, and (b) back-and-forth looking toward the ape’s
mother. Balanced against this, and consistent with an environmen-
tally based theoretical interpretation, the specific social circum-
stances in which pointing would be predicted to occur were ex-
ceedingly rare among Sonso chimpanzees. Moreover, a substantial
portion of pointing among humans occurs as a cospeech, or para-
linguistic gesture— even pointing by human prelinguistic children
is very often embedded within speech streams emitted by their
caregivers. This kind of communicative context would be expected
to be entirely absent from wild ape populations. In our study, a
highly desired food, a social barrier, and a potentially helpful
relative were recorded on seven occasions during 2 years of data
collection: only 2.6% of observation days. Given this paucity of
circumstances, in which the hypothesized necessary environmental
factors for the development of pointing come together, the fre-
quency of deictic signaling is expected to be commensurate with
the rarity of the circumstances in which pointing might be useful
in wild chimpanzee cultures (Leavens et al., 2005). This raises the
possibility that pointing is an option for all wild chimpanzees, but
this capacity has been overlooked in the past because pointing is an
effective tactic only on few occasions in natural environments.
The profound disparity between captive and wild apes in their
propensities to display deictic behavior remains a puzzle. The fact
that manual pointing is relatively commonplace among captive
 86 HOBAITER, LEAVENS, AND BYRNE
apes suggests that pointing, per se, does not require cognitive
adaptations that are unique to humans. It might be the case that
deictic signaling is more common among wild apes than has been
previously recognized, but that it takes forms that are dissimilar to
those commonly found among symbol-using hominids (e.g., Pika
& Mitani, 2006). Although all four of our observations of appar-
ently deictic gestures display a within-episode coherence with
respect to their social contexts, the rarity of the behavior substan-
tially constrains discussion of its origins and subsequent develop-
ment. Future studies in this and other groups of free-ranging apes
might usefully isolate circumstances similar to those we identify in
this corpus (i.e., monopolized food sources) and, perhaps, other
potentially triadic situations, such as alliance solicitation or the
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apparent perception of threat (Veà & Sabater-Pi, 1998). A poten-
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tial focus for future studies is the developmental context in which
these observations occurred. Both individuals were 5-year-olds
and neither had younger siblings. Thus, both had experienced a
prolonged period as their mother’s sole dependent offspring, and in
neither case would the mother have to put a vulnerable infant at
risk by acting as a potential helper. The present observations
strengthen the case that further research within this particularly
sparse area may provide important insights into the capacity for or
use of triadic communication in wild apes living in their natural
habitats.
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Received January 22, 2013
Revision received May 28, 2013
Accepted May 30, 2013 䡲