The Dynamic Dance: Nonvocal Communication in African Great Apes
Our closest relatives, the great apes, are masters of complex and subtle communication yet perform the majority of this information exchange without the benefit of language or even vocalizations. King, a professor of anthropology, uses a theory designed to study human interactions and communication to decipher what is going on in social interactions among the African great apes. In her observations of captive gorillas and in a survey of the vast literature arising from research on the behavior of chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas in the wild and in captivity, the author evinces the complexity possible in nonvocal communication in apes. Creating meaning from gesturing, gazing, shifting position, and other body movements, ape communication goes beyond simple information exchange to include social context, emotion, bargaining, and other intricate messages. Mixing descriptions of observed primate interactions with her analysis of these interactions as forms of communication, King demonstrates the high level of understanding among the primates and makes a strong case for the possible roots of human language. For large natural history collections.Nancy BentCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved