Gorillas Use "Baby-talk" Gestures to Communicate with Infants

Mother Gorillas use "baby talk" when addressing their young, according to a new study pubsihed in the American Journal of Primatology.

Eva Maria Luef from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and her colleague Katja Liebal filmed 120 hours of footage of the gorillas at Leipzig Zoo and Howletts and Port Lympne Wild Animal Parks in the UK to determine communication behaviors and patterns among captive western lowland Gorillas.

According to BBC's Nature News, When researchers analyzed the footage, they found that when adult female gorillas played with their infants, "they used more tactile gestures than they use with other adults, touching, stroking and lightly slapping the youngsters," as shown in the video below.

"The infants also received more repetition," explained Dr Luef to BBC press.

She described one particularly motherly gesture which the researchers call "hand-on".

"This is where mothers put the flat hand of their hand on top of the [infant's] head," said Dr Luef. "It means 'stop it." The study explains that Adult Gorillas use this gesture with one another, translated to "I had enough," and has a stronger conontation when applied to an adult. but the gesture is repeated several times to children, a non-vocal method of inforcing parental authority.

"it helps infants to build the repertoire of signals they will use as adults, in order to communicate with the rest of the gorilla group as well as shows that older animals possess a certain awareness of the infants' immature communication skills," said Dr Luef.

According to Catherine West of the Association for Psychological Sciences, "Infant directed speech" has linguistic cues that differ from adult-directed speech. Just as we repeat words at a slower pace and at a higher pitch so as to gain the attention of the baby, Gorillas too have speech patterns geared specifically towards communicating with infants.