Monkeys are conscious of tradition, new study shows

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Some groups listen to each other much more often than others, as the results of the Lausanne research team published Tuesday in the journal “iScience” show. Researchers examined nearly 85,000 social interactions involving 247 monkeys from three different groups between 2012 and 2020.

It turned out that one of the three groups studied was more social than the others. From a psychological perspective, this social behavior is called participation. Additionally, monkeys in this group de-lice each other more frequently. This continued throughout the nine years of the study.

This observation was independent of sociodemographic differences between the three monkey clans, according to the researchers.

“Moreover, these differences in sociality cannot be explained by ecological or genetic differences, because the three communities share a very similar habitat with overlapping territories, and gene flow is driven by the movements of males between groups. “All this strongly points to the social origin of these differences,” lead author Elena Kerjean said in the university’s statement. “It does,” he said.

According to the researchers, this shows that primate cultures consist of much more diversity and traditions than previously thought. “As research progresses, it is discovered that ‘fundamental’ and universal social behaviors such as play, physical contact and deworming form the basis of cultures,” study leader Charlotte Canteloup said in a statement.

To the scientists’ surprise, animals that changed groups during the study period adapted their behavior to the new group. So they became less social, as the University of Lausanne says. (SDA)

Source : Blick