Age differences in bonobo (Pan paniscus) multimodal communication signals

TL;DR

Young bonobos use more combined communication signals like gestures and sounds than older ones, suggesting a developmental shift in how they communicate.

Contribution

This study reveals age-related changes in bonobo multimodal communication and highlights context-specific signal use.

Findings

Younger bonobos produce more multimodal signals than older individuals.

Multimodal signals increase in agonistic, play, and sexual contexts.

There is a developmental shift toward unimodal signals as bonobos age.

Abstract

While spoken language is unique to humans, many features of human communication are shared with great apes, including the use of signals in multiple modalities such as vocalizations, gestures, and facial expressions. Communication signals can be unimodal (involving a single modality) or multimodal (combining multiple modalities simultaneously). Here, we examined age-related differences in bonobo (Pan paniscus) unimodal and multimodal communication signals. We assessed all vocalizations, gestures, facial expressions, and multimodal combinations produced by captive bonobos across a variety of behavioral contexts. All occurrences of communication signals were collected via focal observations from 12 individuals ranging from 6 months to 44 years of age. All individuals produced multimodal communication signals but all bonobos, regardless of age, produced multimodal signals at lower frequencies than unimodal signals. Age had a significant effect with younger bonobos producing more multimodal signals than older individuals (p < 0.001). The infant and juveniles produced the most multimodal signals and there was an approximately 6% increase in unimodal signals per age year increase. These findings indicate a developmental shift toward unimodal signals as bonobos age. Behavioral context was predictive of signal type usage with an increase of multimodal signals in agonistic (p < 0.001), play (p < 0.001), and sexual contexts (p = 0.001). This indicates that context is important for bonobo modality with multimodal signaling occurring more in “high-risk/high-reward” contexts where proper signal comprehension is vital. This study represents an overview of multimodal communication across bonobo life stages, offering further insights into primate communication patterns and developmental trajectories.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10071-025-01961-2.

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