Macaques attend to scratching in others

Whitehouse, Jamie; Waller, Bridget M.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.10.020

Cited by 28 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 56 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This idea is supported by some of our results, such as the increase in agonistic behaviors in males, the moving away behavior in females and more human‐monkey interaction, which is similar to the results found by Sabbatini et al () where interactions between capuchin monkeys and humans were frequently associated with the food provided by the latter. Although we found a correlation between the influx of visitors and self‐directed behaviors in males, we cannot be certain that this result is an indicator of stress as has been suggested in other studies (Cooke & Schillaci, ; Whitehouse, Micheletta, Kaminski, & Waller, ), as self‐directed behavior is also part of the species' natural repertoire and our recording method did not distinguish between self‐directed behavior possibly caused by stress and normal, healthy self grooming. We found an increase in moving away and foraging for island resources in females, which could be indicators of increased vigilance (Morgan & Tromborg, ) resulting from competition for the food thrown to them by visitors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 39%

Visitor effect on the behavior of a group of spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) maintained at an island in Lake Catemaco, Veracruz/Mexico

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We analyzed the effect of human visitors on the behavior of a group of spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) kept on a small tourist island. Although the spider monkey is a common species in zoos, there are very few specific studies on visitor effects on these monkeys. We conducted behavioral observations on the group of spider monkeys to evaluate the effect of visitors. We also used actimetry devices to measure the variations in the spider monkeys' locomotor activity associated with human presence. With regard to the effect on behavior, we found an increase in self-directed behaviors and a decrease in vocalization, both associated with human presence. Moreover, our results suggest that when people feed monkeys, there is an increase in agonistic behaviors. On the other hand, we found that changes in activity levels in response to human presence vary among individuals. We conclude that changes in spider monkeys' behavior could provide evidence of the negative effect of visitors in our study conditions. Although we discuss the differences in activity levels due to differences in social position, further research is required this topic. Our results can be used to inform management plans for this species in captivity. Improving this relationship between humans and non-human primates through tourism education programs would benefit ecotourism and therefore species conservation programs.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 39%

Visitor effect on the behavior of a group of spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) maintained at an island in Lake Catemaco, Veracruz/Mexico

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…aggressive compared to neutral facial displays of conspecifics 46 , and Barbary macaques glanced longer at anxious (i.e. scratching) weakly bonded than strongly bonded group members, possibly as the former may be more likely to start a fight 47 . Our findings, that third party conflicts drew far more attention from the subject bystander than affiliative or solitary control situations corroborate these results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selective attention for affiliative and agonistic interactions of dominants and close affiliates in macaques

Schülke

Dumdey

Ostner

2020

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Monitoring conspecifics is a crucial process in social learning and a building block of social cognition. Selective attention to social stimuli results from interactions of subject and stimulus characteristics with dominance rank often emerging as an important predictor. We extend previous research by providing as stimuli naturally occurring affiliative interactions between group members instead of pictorial or auditory representations of conflicts, and by extending to the affiliative relationship, i.e. social bond, between subject and stimulus instead of just their dominance relations. Our observational data on adult female rhesus macaques support the prediction that subjects pay more attention to affiliative interactions of others than to solitary controls. Exceedingly more attention was paid to conflicts unfolding in the group which can have more prompt and direct consequences than others' friendly interactions. The valence of the stimulus (affiliative vs. agonistic) affected biases towards individuals dominant over the subject, but not the ubiquitous bias towards close affiliates of the subject. Keeping track of the whereabouts and interactions of key social partners has been proposed as a prerequisite for behavioral coordination among bonded partners. In groups of socially very active monkeys, social attention is gated by both social dominance and social bonding.Vertebrates living in social groups evolved a suite of socio-cognitive skills to maneuver their social environment 1 . These skills include individual recognition, tracking one's own past interactions, monitoring others' interactions, assessing others' relationships, and attributing mental states to others. Such abilities are thought to place increasingly large demands on the cognitive apparatus 1 . Processes involved in the use of social knowledge are a) the acquisition of social information, i.e. information on other individuals and their interactions, b) the application of such information, and c) its exploitation 2 . Each of these processes is subject to phenotypic constraints leading to inter-individual variation in the use of social knowledge 2 . There exists now ample evidence both for the ability to individually recognize conspecifics 3 and for gregarious animals to take into account past events when making social decisions 4 . Therefore, the focus of social cognition research shifted to understand variation in social attention, in social information acquisition, and in how and when individuals monitor others.Social information can function as a reward and incentive for nonhuman primates in experimental tasks suggesting that the acquisition of social information is important 5-7 . Not all information is valued to the same degree however, leading to selective attention varying with traits of the subject, of the stimulus individual or event, or their combination. Social information is thought to be valued particularly high, if its acquisition leads to direct benefits for the attentive subject. Selective attention to less immediate, indirect or ...

show abstract

“…It is possible that when viewing familiar individuals, pre-existing knowledge about those individuals interacts with attentional processes, thereby introducing more variation in what captures attention. Other research indeed suggests that social characteristics of the observer in relation to the observed individual(s) may play a role in how emotions are processed; attention has been shown to be modulated by sex 33 , social bond 34,35 , rank 36 , and kinship 36 . The current study sample does not allow us to disentangle potential effects of social characteristics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention Towards Emotions is Modulated by Familiarity with the Expressor. A Comparison Between Bonobos and Humans

Berlo

Bionda

Kret

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Why can humans be intolerant of, yet also be empathetic towards strangers? This cardinal question has rarely been studied in our closest living relatives, bonobos. Yet, their striking xenophilic tendencies make them an interesting model for reconstructing the socio-emotional capacities of the last common ancestor of hominids. Within a series of dot-probe experiments, we compared bonobos' and humans' attention towards scenes depicting familiar (kith and kin) or unfamiliar individuals with emotional or neutral expressions. Results show that attention of bonobos is immediately captured by emotional scenes depicting unfamiliar bonobos, but not by emotional groupmates (Experiment 1) or expressions of humans, irrespective of familiarity (Experiment 2).Using a large community sample, Experiment 3 shows that human attention is mostly captured by emotional rather than neutral expressions of family and friends. On the one hand, our results show that an attentional bias towards emotions is a shared phenomenon between humans and bonobos, but on the other, that both species have their own unique evolutionarily informed bias. These findings support previously proposed adaptive explanations for xenophilia in bonobos which potentially biases them towards emotional expressions of unfamiliar conspecifics, and parochialism in humans, which makes them sensitive to the emotional expressions of close others. FAMILIARITY MODULATES EMOTION ATTENTION

show abstract

Macaques attend to scratching in others

Cited by 28 publications

References 56 publications

Visitor effect on the behavior of a group of spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) maintained at an island in Lake Catemaco, Veracruz/Mexico

Visitor effect on the behavior of a group of spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) maintained at an island in Lake Catemaco, Veracruz/Mexico

Selective attention for affiliative and agonistic interactions of dominants and close affiliates in macaques

Attention Towards Emotions is Modulated by Familiarity with the Expressor. A Comparison Between Bonobos and Humans

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About