Why does pantomime in orang-utans matter?
It’s a crucial form of complex communication because it enables possibilities associated with language. The orang-utans act out simple, complete sentences like: “You do action X with tool Y on object Z”, and also whole stories. Some researchers see pantomime as one of the gestural forms crucial to language evolution; others believe it is uniquely human, having evolved in hominins after they diverged from the other great apes. So finding convincing evidence of pantomime in living great apes suggests this ability was in place before hominins evolved – even if it isn’t as complex as it is in humans Does this communication contain what’s often considered a uniquely human skill – recursion? I don’t believe I’ve seen much of that. But some think recursion may be a characteristic of episodic memory, which involves mentally reliving past events, and that episodic memory may be part of an ability to imagine past and future events. One case does suggest orang-utans can do this. An orang-utan cal
