Chimpanzees Exhibit Human-Like Conversational Turn-Taking

New study reveals rapid, structured gestural exchanges among wild chimps, mirroring human dialogue patterns.

Researchers analyzed over 8,500 gestures from 252 chimpanzees across five East African communities.
Chimps' gestural exchanges average 120 milliseconds between turns, similar to human conversational pauses.
The study highlights evolutionary parallels in communication mechanisms between humans and chimpanzees.
Different chimp communities show slight variations in response times, akin to human cultural differences.
Findings suggest that turn-taking in communication may have deep evolutionary roots shared with other social species.