Journal ArticleDOI
Grooming and Anxiety in Barbary Macaques
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The hypothesis that grooming reduces anxiety in the donor and/or the recipient of Barbary macaques is tested, and it is found that grooming seems in some cases to increase, not alleviate, anxiety.Abstract:
Grooming is a fundamental component of sociality in many gregarious animal species, and elucidating the costs and benefits of this behaviour is crucial for understanding its function. There is evidence that animals giving grooming pay a cost in terms of the time and energy they invest, while recipients benefit not just from the removal of dirt and parasites, but also from the relaxing effects of being groomed. Recently, however, studies of primates have indicated that giving grooming may also provide such hedonic benefits, reducing levels of stress or anxiety in the groomer. In this study of free-ranging adult female Barbary macaques at Trentham Monkey Forest (Stoke-on-Trent, UK), we tested the hypothesis that grooming reduces anxiety in the donor and/or the recipient. During focal follows, we quantified females' rates of self-scratching as a behavioural index of their anxiety levels. Self-scratching rates in the 2-min periods after bouts of grooming (given, received and reciprocated) were compared to overall mean self-scratching rates; we predicted that if grooming reduces anxiety, self-scratching rates would be significantly lower after grooming bouts than mean levels. We first analysed all grooming bouts and then analysed separately grooming bouts with adult males, with all adult females, with subordinate adult females and with dominant adult females. Contrary to our prediction, self-scratching rates were never seen to be lower after grooming than mean levels. In fact, for the majority of grooming partner–direction combinations, we found significantly higher rates of self-scratching after grooming compared to mean levels. The hypothesis that grooming reduces anxiety was therefore not supported. Grooming seems in some cases to increase, not alleviate, anxiety. We explore possible explanations for these unexpected results.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Reciprocity in group-living animals: partner control versus partner choice.
TL;DR: Evidence that partner choice is the prevalent process in primates and proposed explanations for this pattern are reviewed and predictions are made that highlight the need for studies that separate the effects of partner control and partner choice in a broader variety of group‐living taxa.
Journal ArticleDOI
Influences of Relatedness, Food Deprivation, and Sex on Adult Behaviors in the Group-living Insect Forficula auricularia
TL;DR: The results indicate the limited role of cooperation among F. auricularia adults during their group-living phase, as adults mostly expressed self-directed and aggressive behaviors and showed allogrooming, a social behavior that offers scope for cooperation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Whom to Groom and for What? Patterns of Grooming in Female Barbary Macaques (Macaca sylvanus)
TL;DR: Grooming was more frequent among individuals with higher friendship values as well as amongst related individuals, and the reciprocation of grooming was a significant predictor of grooming interactions between individuals of similar rank, but not between those individuals more distantly separated in the social hierarchy.
Journal ArticleDOI
Grooming, social rank and ‘optimism’ in tufted capuchin monkeys: a study of judgement bias
TL;DR: Receiving grooming had no detectable immediate consequences, but increased ‘optimism’ was observed in dominant monkeys and in monkeys that received overall larger quantities of grooming, providing only partial support for the hypothesis that a system of emotional bookkeeping underlies the capacity of group-living animals to reciprocate cooperative interactions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Scratching under positive and negative arousal in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus).
Sarah J. Neal,Nancy G. Caine +1 more
TL;DR: Data from the current study, and a close examination of data from studies showing no change in scratching under anxiety‐provoking circumstances, suggest that the anxiety–scratching relationship may be more complex than has been reported previously.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The social role of touch in humans and primates: behavioural function and neurobiological mechanisms.
TL;DR: It is suggested that these two neuropeptide families may play different roles in the processes of social bonding in primates and non-primates, and that more experimental work will be needed to tease them apart.
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Grooming, alliances and reciprocal altruism in vervet monkeys
TL;DR: The field experiments on vervet monkeys are demonstrated to demonstrate that grooming between unrelated individuals increases the probability that they will subsequently attend to each others' solicitations for aid.
Journal ArticleDOI
A modest proposal: displacement activities as an indicator of emotions in primates
Dario Maestripieri,Dario Maestripieri,Gabriele Schino,Gabriele Schino,Filippo Aureli,Filippo Aureli,Alfonso Troisi +6 more
TL;DR: A review of the primate literature indicates that displacement activities tend to occur in situations of psychosocial stress and that their frequency of occurrence is affected by anxiogenic and anxiolytic drugs as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Beta-endorphin concentrations in cerebrospinal fluid of monkeys are influenced by grooming relationships.
TL;DR: Changes in the brain's opioid system contingent on grooming in monkeys support the view that brain opioids play an important role in mediating social attachment and may provide the neural basis on which primate sociality has evolved.
Journal ArticleDOI
Market forces predict grooming reciprocity in female baboons
Louise Barrett,Louise Barrett,S. P. Henzi,Tony Weingrill,Tony Weingrill,John Lycett,John Lycett,Russell A. Hill +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that grooming is a commodity that female primates can trade, either for itself or in exchange for other services (sensu biological markets theory) and that the decision to do either will depend on the degree of competition within a social group.