Tactical use of unimodal and bimodal communication by chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes

Do chimpanzees tailor their communication in accordance with the attentional status of a human observer? We presented 57 chimpanzees with three experimental conditions in randomized order: an experimenter offered a banana to the focal subject (Focal), to a cagemate of the focal subject (In-Cage) and to a chimpanzee in an adjacent cage (Adjacent) while a second experimenter recorded the first and second responses of the focal subject in all three conditions. The chimpanzees' behaviour was mostly visual or bimodal in the Focal condition, changing to auditory behaviour or disengagement in the In-Cage and Adjacent conditions. Thus, with no explicit training and on their first trials in all instances, the chimpanzees tactically deployed their communicative behaviours in the visual and auditory domains in accordance with the manipulated attentional and intentional status of a human observer.

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