Researchers said they have uncovered a resemblance between chimpanzee and human conversational behaviours.

A study led by Gal Badihi and Catherine Hobaiter from the University of St Andrews discovered that primates communicate in a manner similar to humans.

Human conversations are characterized by quick turn-taking, with responses occurring within about 200 milliseconds.

The researchers studied five wild chimpanzee communities in East Africa and observed over 8,500 gestures among 252 individuals.

They found that chimpanzees exhibit similarly fast-paced interactions, with gestures and responses occurring in rapid succession, often within 120 milliseconds of each other.

Gal Badihi said: 'Chimpanzees demonstrate a universal timing in their communicative exchanges, with slight variations among different chimpanzee communities, analogous to cultural differences in human conversations.'

The findings suggest that these communication patterns may have deep evolutionary roots shared between humans and chimpanzees. They highlight how non-verbal gestures facilitate coordinated interactions and manage social dynamics, much like spoken language does for humans.

Researchers aim to delve deeper into the evolutionary origins of these conversational structures across different species to understand their adaptive significance and universality in social animals.