ABSTRACT
Although no living nonhuman primate species has developed a humanlike language to date, all species clearly possess the capacity to communicate a broad spectrum of information across multiple sensory modalities. These differences in prototypical response to environmental novelty and challenge appear early in infancy, and in the absence of major environmental alterations, appear to be remarkably stable throughout the life span. The implications of these and other possible differences in emotional thresholds among individuals for a troop of rhesus monkeys' communicative patterns are considerable. The cross-generational transmission of these tendencies helps ensure that such diversity will become a tradition in the history of each troop. For rhesus monkeys, the development of "culture" does not encompass the emergence of a material technology. Reactivity diversity in monkeys is reflected in patterns of nonverbal communication via differential emotional expressiveness and, it has been argued, may provide the basis for a monkey troop's emotional "traditions" and social "culture".
