Embraces and Grooming in Captive Spider Monkeys |
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Authors: | Email author" target="_blank">Colleen?M?SchaffnerEmail author Filippo?Aureli |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Psychology, University College Chester, Chester, England;(2) School of Biological and Earth Science, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, L3, England;(3) Department of Psychology, Centre for Stress Research, University College Chester, Parkgate Road Chester, CH1 4BJ, England |
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Abstract: | Relatively little information is available regarding the role of social grooming and embraces in spider monkeys that live
in fission-fusion societies in which individuals are usually split into subgroups. We investigated whether embraces and grooming
have similar roles in captive spider monkeys by examining their occurrence in two contexts. One context was fusion, i.e. when
the monkeys moved into an area of the enclosure where other monkeys were present, in which individuals from different subgroups
were expected to exchange greeting behavior. The other context was the access to young infants, in which females were expected
increase their friendly behavior toward mothers. We collected data by observing all individuals within a subgroup and via
focal animal sampling. We found that overall embraces occurred more frequently than grooming and that their distributions
were not correlated. The frequency of embraces was positively associated with the number of fusion events per observation,
whereas the frequency of grooming bouts was not. Furthermore, embraces were more frequent following initial approaches after
fusion versus subsequent approaches, and the figure was higher than the corresponding one for grooming. Mothers received more
embraces after than before the birth of their infants, whereas there was no such effect for grooming. Embraces, but not grooming,
play a role in the regulation of social relationships in spider monkeys. Embraces may serve as signals of benign disposition
in contexts that are likely to be associated with tension, such as fusion and access to infants. |
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Keywords: | Spider monkeys Ateles fission-fusion social system embraces grooming |
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