“Gestures” do not exist without the other animal (Symbolic process beginning with “animal gestures”: Gendlin and Mead: 3)

For both Gendlin and Mead, “animal gestures” such as “body looks, sounds, and moves” are gestures that are only possible when the other animal responds to them. Moving their arms and legs in the same way without the other animal cannot be called “animal gestures” in the sense that they later evolve into human language:

(1) In the first dance the whole bodylook of each carries the other forward. There is no sequence without the other.” (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 155)

... gestures in their original forms are the first overt phases in social acts, a social act being one in which one individual serves in his action as a stimulus to a response from another individual. (Mead, 1910, p. 397)

The gesture ... does not exist as a gesture merely in the experience of the single individual. The meaning of a gesture by one organism ... is found in the response of another organism... (Mead, 1934, pp. 145–6)

The “animal gestures,” also called “the first dance” by Gendlin, that Gendlin and Mead mean are specifically the following:

Sexual intercourse, fighting, nest-building, and other important behavior sequences can be initiated by certain postures and sounds on the part of another animal. When a male cat sees another, its tail gets thick and it hisses and growls. This either causes flight or fight-readying on the part of the other cat. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 115)

Dogs approaching each other in hostile attitude ... walk around each other, growling and snapping, and waiting for the opportunity to attack. ... a certain attitude of one individual that calls out a response in the other, which in turn calls out a different approach and a different response, and so on indefinitely. (Mead, 1934, p. 14)

The behaviors, postures, and sounds of each cat carry forward the other. ... One monkey’s raising an arm to hit may carry forward the other’s fight-readying, and fighting. (Gendlin, 1997/2018, p. 115)

... beginnings of acts call out responses which lead to readjustments of acts which have been commenced, and these readjustments lead to still other beginnings of response which again call out still other readjustments. ... They are the glance of the eye that is the beginning of the spring or the flight, the attitude of body with which the spring or flight commences, the growl, or cry, or snarl with which the respiration adjusts itself to oncoming struggle, and they all change with the answering attitudes, glances of the eye, growls and snarls which are the beginnings of the actions which they themselves arouse. (Mead, 1910a, p. 398 [SW, 124])

There are a series of attitudes, movements, on the part of ... [life] forms which belong to the beginnings of acts that are the stimuli for the responses that take place. The beginning of a response becomes the stimulus to the first form to change his attitude, to adopt a different act. The term "gesture" may be identified with these beginnings of social acts which are stimuli for the response of other forms. (Mead, 1934, p. 43)

In any case, such body looks, sounds, and moves are called “animal gestures” only when animals of the same species (a kind of en#3) respond to them.

References

Gendlin, E. T. (1997/2018). A process model. Northwestern University Press.

Mead, G.H. (1910). Social consciousness and the consciousness of meaning. Psychological Bulletin, 7(12), 397–405.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society: from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. (edited by C.W. Morris). University of Chicago Press.

Mead, G.H. (1964/1981). Selected writings [Abbreviated as SW] (edited by A.J. Reck). University of Chicago Press.