School of Resource and Environmental Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei, Anhui 230601, China.
School of Life Science, Anhui University, Hefei, Anhui 230601, China.
Zool Res. 2019 Mar 18;40(2):139-145. doi: 10.24272/j.issn.2095-8137.2018.049. Epub 2018 Jun 28.
In some nonhuman primates, infants function as a social tool that can bridge relationships among group members. Infants are a desired commodity for group members, and mothers control access to them. The biological market theory suggests that grooming is widespread and represents a commodity that can be exchanged for infant handling. As a limited resource, however, the extent to which infants are interchanged between mothers (females with an infant) and non-mothers (potential handlers, females without an infant) remains unclear. In this study, we collected behavioral data to investigate the relationship between grooming and infant handling in free-ranging Tibetan macaques () at Mt. Huangshan, China. Our results showed that females with infants received more grooming than females without infants. After her infant was handled, mother females received more grooming than they did during daily grooming interactions. However, with the increasing number of infants within the social group, both the grooming that mothers received and the grooming that non-mothers invested for handling infants decreased. We also found that non-mothers invested more time in grooming to gain access to younger infants than older infants. Our results provide evidence that infants are social commodities for both mother and non-mother females. Mothers use infants for obtain grooming and non-mothers use grooming to gain access to infants. The current study implies a bidirectional and complex interchange pattern between grooming and infant handling to compensate for the dyadic grooming disparity in non-human primates.
在一些非人类灵长类动物中，婴儿是一种可以在群体成员之间建立关系的社交工具。婴儿是群体成员所渴望的商品，而母亲则控制着他们的获取途径。生物市场理论表明，梳理行为广泛存在，并代表着一种可以用来换取婴儿照顾的商品。然而，作为一种有限的资源，婴儿在母亲（有婴儿的雌性）和非母亲（潜在的照顾者，没有婴儿的雌性）之间的交换程度尚不清楚。在这项研究中，我们收集了行为数据，以调查中国黄山自由放养的藏猕猴（）中梳理行为和婴儿照顾之间的关系。我们的结果表明，有婴儿的雌性接受的梳理比没有婴儿的雌性多。在她的婴儿被照顾后，母亲雌性接受的梳理比日常梳理互动时多。然而，随着社会群体中婴儿数量的增加，母亲接受的梳理和非母亲为照顾婴儿而投入的梳理都减少了。我们还发现，非母亲为了获得年幼婴儿而投入更多的时间进行梳理，而不是年长的婴儿。我们的研究结果表明，婴儿是母亲和非母亲雌性的社交商品。母亲利用婴儿来获取梳理，而非母亲则利用梳理来获得婴儿的照顾。本研究表明，在非人类灵长类动物中，梳理和婴儿照顾之间存在双向且复杂的交换模式，以弥补对偶梳理差异。
