Chimpanzees Warning Calls -- How Close to Language?

The New York Times has astory in today's Science section about chimpanzees changing their warning call if they think other chimps already know about the danger:The significance of the finding, Dr. Crockford said, is that it challenges the view that only humans keep track of what others know and change their communication to match. “This experiment shows they are monitoring their audience,” she said of the chimps.That part did not interest me much. Chimps are smart and know something of what their fellows think. This is the kind of finding that gets a reaction when the finder (and Times reporter) have no theory about what matters.But I have a theory and something else in the story struck me as quite important:...chimps that thought their fellows were unaware of the road hazard made more alert hoo calls. They also stayed longer to look back and forth from the snake to where they thought their companions were. That ’s the way chimps try to show their friends where a danger is.Why do I think that's a big deal? Because the chimpanzees are drawing attention to something.It sounds like they are drawing attention to their own location rather than the snake itself. It is not quite joint-attention. The signaler focuses attention on another chimp and the listener looks at the signaler rather than trying to make out the snake. But they have a topic (a snake) and wouldn't have to change much to have a true speech triangle. Keep your eye on chimp behavior during warning signals. 

Source: Babel's Dawn - November 16, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs