Skip to main content
Log in

When play is a family business: adult play, hierarchy, and possible stress reduction in common marmosets

  • News and Perspectives
  • Published:
Primates Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Easy to recognize but not easy to define, animal play is a baffling behavior because it has no obvious immediate benefits for the performers. However, the absence of immediate advantages, if true, would leave adult play (costly but maintained by evolution, spanning lemurs to Homo sapiens) unexplained. Although a commonly held view maintains that play is limited by stress, an emergent hypothesis states that play can regulate stress in the short term. Here we explored this hypothesis in a captive family group of New World monkeys, Callithrix jacchus (common marmoset). We observed six subjects and gathered data on aggressive, play, and scratching behavior via focal (6 h/individual) and all occurrences sampling (115 h). We found that play levels were highest during pre-feeding, the period of maximum anxiety due to the forthcoming competition over food. Scratching (the most reliable indicator of stress in primates) and play showed opposite trends along hierarchy, with dominants scratching more and playing less than subordinates. Finally, scratching decreased after play, whereas play appeared to be unrelated to previous scratching events, symptoms of a potential stressful state. In conclusion, both play timing and hierarchical distribution indicate that play limits stress, more than vice versa, at least in the short term.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Antonacci D, Norscia I, Palagi E (2010) Stranger to familiar: wild strepsirhines manage xenophobia by playing. PLoS ONE 5(10): e13218. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013218

  • Altmann J (1974) Observational study of behavior: sampling methods. Behaviour 49:227–267

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Beach FA (1945) Current concepts of play in animals. Am Nat 79:523–541

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bekoff M, Byers JA (1992) Time, energy and play. Anim Behav 44:981–982

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bekoff M, Byers JA (1998) Animal play: evolutionary comparative and ecological approaches. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Biben M, Champoux M (1999) Play and stress: cortisol as a negative correlate of play in Saimiri. Play Cult Stud 2:91–208

    Google Scholar 

  • Burghardt GM (2005) The genesis of animal play: testing the limits. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Castles DL, Whiten A, Aureli F (1999) Social anxiety, relationships and self-directed behaviour among wild female olive baboons. Anim Behav 58:1207–1215

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • de Vries H, Netto WJ, Hanegraaf PLH (1993) MatMan: a program for the analyses of sociometric matrices and behavioural transition matrices. Behaviour 125:157–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Digby LJ (1995) Social organization in a wild population of Callithrix jacchus: II. Intragroup social behavior. Primates 36:361–375

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fagen R (1993) Primate juvenile and primate play. In: Pereira ME, Fairbanks LA (eds) Juvenile primates. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 182–196

    Google Scholar 

  • Fagen R, Fagen F (2004) Juvenile survival and benefits of play behaviour in brown bears, Ursus arctos. Evol Ecol Res 6:89–102

    Google Scholar 

  • Gray P (2009) Play as a foundation for hunter-gatherer social existence. Am J Play 1:476–522

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein ZA, Padow VA, Romeo RD (2010) The effects of stress on play and home cage behaviors in adolescent male rats. Dev Psychobiol 52:62–70

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kutsukake N (2003) Assessing relationship quality and social anxiety among wild chimpanzees using self-directed behaviour. Behaviour 140:1153–1171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martin P, Bateson P (1986) Measuring behaviour: an introductory guide. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Mundry R, Fisher J (1998) Use of statistical programs for non-parametric tests of small samples often leads to incorrect P values: examples from animal behaviour. Anim Behav 56:256–259

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Palagi E (2006) Social play in bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): implications for natural social systems and inter-individual relationships. Am J Phys Anthropol 129:418–426

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Palagi E (2007) Play at work: revisiting data focussing on chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). J Anthropol Sci 85:153–164

    Google Scholar 

  • Palagi E, Cordoni G, Borgognini-Tarli SM (2004) Immediate and delayed benefits of play behaviour: new evidence from chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Ethology 110:949–962

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Palagi E, Norscia I (2010) Scratching around stress: hierarchy and reconciliation make the difference in wild brown lemurs (Eulemur fulvus). Stress. doi:10.3109/10253890.2010.505272

  • Pellis SM, Iwaniuk AN (1999) The problem of adult play-fighting: a comparative analysis of play and courtship in primates. Ethology 105:783–806

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pellis SM, Iwaniuk AN (2000) Adult–adult play in primates: comparative analyses of its origin, distribution and evolution. Ethology 106:1083–1104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pellis SM, Pellis VC (2009) The playful brain: venturing to the limits of neuroscience. Oneworld Publications, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson MF, Poole TB (1976) An ethogram of the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus jacchus): general behavioural repertoire. Anim Behav 24:428–451

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson MF, Rylands AB (1988) The marmosets, genus Callithrix. In: Mittermeier RA, Rylands AB, Coimbra-Filho AF, da Fonseca GAB (eds) Ecology and behavior of neotropical primates, vol 2. World Wildlife Fund, Washington, DC, pp 131–222

    Google Scholar 

  • Troisi A (2002) Displacement activities as a behavioral measure of stress in nonhuman primates and human subjects. Stress 5:47–54

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Voland E (1977) Social play behavior of the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus Erxl.1777) in captivity. Primates 18:883–901

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson JH (2001) Prolactin in rats is attenuated by conspecific touch in a novel environment. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 1:199–205

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Paolo Cavicchio, director of the Pistoia Zoo, for providing logistic and moral support to this study, to Tatiana Peraffán-Eraso and Andrea Vignolo for helping with data collection, and to V. Marsillac for critical suggestions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elisabetta Palagi.

About this article

Cite this article

Norscia, I., Palagi, E. When play is a family business: adult play, hierarchy, and possible stress reduction in common marmosets. Primates 52, 101–104 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-010-0228-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-010-0228-0

Keywords

Navigation