Angry Apes “Flick” Each Other Off. Is That Where We Got Our Gesture?

ne evening last spring, I sat down at the American Museum of Natural History’s 85th annual James Arthur lecture, in New York, on the evolution of the brain. This year’s speaker was Richard Byrne, who studies the evolution of cognitive and social behavior, particularly gestural communication in the great apes, at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews. He began with a short video. Sitting in a mess of leaves and branches in Budongo, Uganda, a male chimpanzee shakes a branch with his right arm while scratching that arm with his left hand in a quick, back-and-forth motion. A female chimp in the shot looks on, apparently quite uninterested. “He waits, looks at her, she’s not reacting,” Byrne says. The male shakes the branch once