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Studies have shown that humans have the ability to understand the gestures (手势) of apes. That is a little surprising, because most people haven’t spent much time with apes.

Humans use words to talk to each other. But we also point, nod, and use our hands to show what we mean. Apes have their own gestures to show what they mean. Chimpanzees and bonobos are two kinds of apes. They are closest to humans. They use about 80 different gestures to show what they mean.

Scientists have learned the meanings of these gestures by studying Chimpanzees and bonobos for years. They share over 90% of the same gestures. Scientists have studied how apes use gestures. But for the longest time, no one studied if humans could understand the gestures of apes.

Researchers Kirsty Graham and Catherine Hobaiter at the University of St. Andrews decided to test this idea. They wanted to see if humans with no training or experience could understand the gestures of apes.

The researchers made a game for people to play online. The game was simple. People watched short videos of apes making a gesture. Then they had to choose the correct meaning of the gesture out of four possible (可能的) answers. For the videos, the researchers chose ten of the most common gestures used by apes. Thousands of people played the game.

The researchers were surprised to find that for some of the gestures, people were able to choose the correct meaning about 80% of the time. One example of this was the gesture of touching the mouth. People correctly guessed it meant “give me that food”.

The scientists believe humans may have a natural (天生的) ability to understand the gestures of apes. But it’s not clear why. Humans and other apes all developed from an earlier kind of ape. One possibility is that the body language of these gestures has been passed down to all apes from the common ape ancestor. Another possibility is that the gestures are natural because humans and apes share similar (相似的) body shape and need to communicate similar ideas.