Rubin, a Bonobo baby, looked near his Mother Rose in the Congo tropical forest when an adult bonobo named olive has pulled food from tiny hands from Rubin. Then Olive hit the baby, hard, in the face and neck – right in front of his mother.
Primatologist Rachna Reddy from the University of Utah, who observed the group about 30 feet distance, the mother expected the law to be expected. “I said to myself,” Hange! ” Someone is about to be beaten, ”she says. But for Reddy's shock, Rose has not raised her finger, even if Bébé Rubin moaned.
In a recent study, Reddy and his colleagues have documented surprising differences in parental philosophies of the two cousins closest to humanity: bonobos and chimpanzees. While Bonobo mothers were very rarely intervened when someone was “nasty” for their children, the chimpanzees behaved more like “helicopter mothers”, working almost half of the time. This was against the expectations of primatologists with regard to these two species and shows that “what it means to be a support parent varies through the animal kingdom,” says Reddy. The study was published in February in Animal behavior.
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Bonobos and chimpanzees have a very different reputation. Bonobos are often considered “as being the most beautiful of our cousins”, while the chimpanzees get a bad blow, explains Elizabeth Lonsdorf, primatologist at Emory University, which was not involved in the new newspaper. In the Société de Chimpanzees, dominant males use fatal force to defend their lawn, and infanticide and sexual coercion against women are common. Bonobo is matriarchal and women have a lasting impact on their offspring. This is particularly the case for the sons, who inherit their rank as their mother and may need her help as a “wing woman” to mate successfully.
Frankly, said Reddy, she expected that the dominant women of Bonobos are “supermoms”. But after looking at Olive Smack Rubin with impunity, Reddy decided to see if she had come across a difference in the species in parental styles.
During several seasons of land, Reddy and his team followed chimpanzees in Kibale in Uganda and Bonobos National Park in the Kokolopori Bonobo reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The researchers documented what had happened whenever another member of the species was “nasty” for a young person in the presence of their mother – for example, biting them, pushing them out of a tree or the steering wheel a piece of food. Surprisingly, Bonobo mothers have adopted a more practical approach; They got involved in only 8% of conflicts where their child was the “victim”. The mothers of Chimpanzee intervened almost half of the time.
Given the reputation of the species, it is tempting to assume that the mothers of Chimpanzee intervene because their offspring is in real danger – and that the Bonobo mothers are looking back because they know that their children will not harm their softer society. But according to Reddy data, young people from Bonobo and Chimpanzee are both confronted with conflicts with similar risks of real damage. Indeed, Reddy saw young bonobos injure or lack food while their mother was watching.
So why would the bonobos female be held? At first, Reddy and his team thought it could be to preserve politically important relations with other dominant women. But it was unlikely that Bonobo mothers intervene even when the aggressor was an orphan man – one of the lowest members of a Bonobo social group.
Reddy was also surprised to find a difference in the way passers -by reacted when young people were in trouble. The chimpanzees who were not the mother of the victim intervened in 21% of conflicts. Bonobo passers -by intervened 7% of the time. The researchers say that this could suggest a deeper psychological difference between bonobos and chimpanzees, which goes far beyond parenting.
Although more research is necessary to determine whether these patterns are holding in other populations of these primates, a possible explanation is that the constant threat of violence in the life of the chimpanzee could initiate chimpanzees to defend other members of their social group, whatever the situation. Group obligations are “a truly fundamental part of the company Chimp, explains Reddy. Chimpanzees “can take big risks to protect each other in meetings [with a hostile group]- Like a leap to cover someone who is attacked “with his own body, said Reddy.
Lonsdorf says that the new study is an impressive work with exciting results. “It is contrary to our initial intestinal response as primatologists and the popular perceptions of these guys,” she says. In this case, the famous responsiveness of chimpanzees “means that they intervene more”.
And above all, chimpanzee mothers do not necessarily always launch a counterattack when you are rooted to defend their offspring, says Reddy; The situation can cause assault, but it could also mean going and kissing the attacker “.
“A company that has these higher aggressiveness levels could be more protective, could be more friendly [and] This could also be more empathetic on certain levels, “explains the co-author of the Martin Surbeck study of Harvard University, which studies the social behavior of primates.
At the same time, experts agree that it is important not to “shame mom” bonobos by imposing our ideas centered on man of what a support parent looks like. “That's not it [bonobos] are bad mothers, “says Surbeck. The intervention of conflicts can simply” not be an aspect of their mothering only in the chimpanzees “.
