I believe a single emoji — ponder or similar — is genuinely an appropriate response here, however they are automatically stripped. A policy I agree with, but they are surprisingly capable despite their simplicity and (in many cases) direct mapping onto body states.
emoji don't help you express precise rational statements. they add something that text lacks: the subtext that people normally express with tone and body language. emoji aren't a replacement for your day to day unicode symbols, they are something you can add to make your messages more expressive.
technically you can express all of the same things without emoji, but there's a limit to how subtle you can be. by adding an emotional cue using an emoji i can completely change the meaning of a statement by adding contextual subtext.
There are many interesting things which cannot be expressed by body language, one of which is what is meant by “primarily”.
Maslow's hierarchy? Body language is primary, it comes first.
By number of bits required to describe the typical change to synaptic weights? No idea.
By number of raw bits? If I had to bet, I’d give 10:1 that body language beats words with reasonable compression for both audio and video streams, much stronger certainty for uncompressed.
That is a great point. Also note though, that none of the Bonobo/Chimp gestures listed in OP are actually emotions! They are mostly commands or expressed desires. And all can be easily done by humans with gestures and no voice as well.
Do these animals express emotion with face and body? Do we know very little about that, or is that just outside the scope of this study?
