According to a news release from Georgia State University, chimpanzees can use hand gestures to communicate as they hunt for food. Researchers at the school’s Language Researcher Center studied how two language-trained chimps communicated with a human to locate food. Their findings are the best evidence yet that primates can utilize gestures to organize actions in pursuit of a specific goal.

The researchers created a job that required coordination among the chimps and human to locate a piece of food that had been placed in a big outdoor area. The human did not know where the food was placed, and the chimps utilized gestures like pointing to direct the human to the food.

“[The design of the experiment] allows the chimpanzees to communicate information in the manner of their choosing, but also requires them to initiate and to persist in communication,” said Charles Menzel, a senior research scientist at the Language Research Center, in a statement. “The chimpanzees used gestures to recruit the assistance of an otherwise uninformed person and to direct the person to hidden objects 10 or more meters away. Because of the openness of this paradigm, the findings illustrate the high level of intentionality chimpanzees are capable of, including their use of directional gestures. This study adds to our understanding of how well chimpanzees can remember and communicate about their environment.”

According to Anna Roberts of the University of Chester, “the use of gestures to coordinate joint activities such as finding food may have been an important building block in the evolution of language.”

Sarah-Jane Vick of the University of Stirling noted that earlier work in both wild and captive chimps has revealed flexibility in their gestural creation, “but the more complex coordination task used here demonstrates the considerable cognitive abilities that underpin chimpanzee communication.”

The study’s findings are described in greater detail in the journal Nature Communications.