Hormonal and compartmental correlates during adrenarche in the chimpanzee

Ten male and eleven female Chimpanzees from three to nine years of age were studied to establish possible correlations between behavioral changes and hormonal changes peculiar to adrenarche and the pre-puberty period. Most of the thirteen behaviors studied varied with age, body weight and hormones. For the males, the correlations were significant statistically for age, weight and plasma concentration of testosterone and of FSH. The correlations for the females were more often not significant statistically. In ten out of the thirteen behaviors for the female, however, the correlations with the sulfate of plasma dehydroepiandrosterone were in the same direction as those observed for the males with testosterone.