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Chimpanzees, who split from the human branch family about six million years ago, are familiar with the communication through hand gestures, a new study has found. 

Researchers at Georgia State University analyzed behaviors of chimpanzees and concluded that the chimpanzees can communicate the information that they know to other chimpanzees through hand gestures. 

The primates were tested to see if they could relate to humans where food was hidden in an outdoors locations. They observed, that chimpanzees were able to convey fellow chimps and even a human where the food was located through by hand gestures. 

A test was devised by the team of researchers that demanded coordination among the chimps and a human to find a piece of food that was purposely hidden in a large area. The human in the study did not know about the location of the food. The chimps used gestures to point the hidden food out.

"It allows the chimpanzees to communicate information in the manner of their choosing, but also requires them to initiate and to persist in communication," said Dr. Charles Menzel, a senior research scientist at the Language Research Center, in a press release. 

"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."

The development of the study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.