First steps in the macaque world: do rhesus mothers encourage their infants' independent locomotion?

doi:10.1016/0003-3472(95)90075-6

Animal Behaviour

Volume 49, Issue 6, June 1995, Pages 1541-1549

https://doi.org/10.1016/0003-3472(95)90075-6 Get rights and content

Abstract

This study investigated early interactions between 28 rhesus macaque, Macaca mulatta, mothers and their infants living in captive social groups to assess whether mothers actively encouraged their infants' independent locomotion and if such encouragement could be considered teaching. Mothers differed in their tendency to break contact with their infants in the first days of infant life, and this tendency increased significantly with previous reproductive experience. Mothers that left their infants early in life were also more likely to engage in backward walking and lip-smacking to their infants than mothers that did not leave their infants early in life. Infants that were left by their mothers in their first days of life broke and made contact with their mothers for the first time earlier than infants that were not left by their mothers. Interruption of contact with infants early in their life had no apparent immediate benefits to mothers but did have immediate risks because it increased the probability of infant kidnapping by other group members. Mothers whose infants gave a distress vocalization after the first interruption of contact broke contact with them less frequently in subsequent days than mothers whose infants did not vocalize. Although some of these findings are open to other interpretations, altogether they strongly suggest that some mothers actively encourage their infants' independent locomotion, that maternal encouragement is sensitive to infant competence, and that encouraged infants display some locomotor skills earlier in life than they would have without maternal encouragement.

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Rhesus macaques
2019, Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior
Rhesus macaques live in multimale multifemale social groups with a matrilineal structure and a linear dominance hierarchy. Females spend their entire lives in their natal groups whereas males emigrate to other groups at puberty. Strong social bonds between closely related females represent the foundations of the rhesus society. Both females and males are highly sexually promiscuous and adult males do not exhibit any parental behavior. Female dominance ranks are very stable and transmitted across generations, from mothers to daughters, through social support. Research with rhesus macaques has allowed scientists to understand many basic aspects of animal behavior such as dispersal and philopatry, altruistic and nepotistic behavior, aggression and submission, and dominance hierarchies.
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Variation in the amount of social touch an infant receives arises, in part, as a result of individual differences in maternal care (Fairbanks, 1996). Mothers show natural variation in their tendency to break contact with infants, with some breaking contact more frequently early in infant life as a possible means of promoting independence (Maestripieri, 1995). Physiological differences may drive this difference in time spent away from infants.
In this paper, our goal is to explore what is known about the role of social touch during development. We first address the neural substrates of social touch and the role of tactile experience in neural development. We discuss natural variation in early exposure to social touch, followed by a discussion on experimental manipulations of social touch during development and “natural experiments”, such as early institutionalization. We then consider the role of other developmental and experiential variables that predict social touch in adults. Throughout, we propose and consider new theoretical models of the role of social touch during development on later behavior and neurobiology.
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More quantitative data are available in monkeys, although conclusive evidence for teaching is lacking (Caro & Hauser 1992; Maestripieri 1995a; Visalberghi & Fragaszy 1996). Among the most suggestive studies are those by Maestripieri (1995b, 1996), who reported that macaque (Macaca spp.) mothers occasionally break contact with young infants, move away from them and give retrieval signals to lure the offspring back. These data from monkeys and apes are reminiscent of methods used by human parents to promote motor skill development in children (Whiten & Milner 1984; Maestripieri 1995a; Whiten 1999), suggesting that teaching of basic skills to infants may share important similarities between humans and other animals.
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Giving calls to alert conspecifics to the presence of food is widespread among mammals and birds. Although the circumstances affecting the function of food-associated calls have been well studied, data on how receivers come to associate these calls with food are lacking. Specifically, the possibility that individuals may be actively taught to associate certain vocalizations with food delivery has not been addressed. In pied babblers, Turdoides bicolor, adults often give purr calls when feeding young and offspring subsequently associate these calls with food delivery. We investigated how offspring come to associate purr calls with food, specifically addressing the question of whether adults teach nestlings to respond to these calls. Adults use purr calls only in the presence of offspring and purr-calling does not seem to result in immediate, direct benefits to adults. Rather, the function of purr-calling seems to be to promote offspring learning: experimental playbacks show that nestlings learn to respond to purr calls and that purr calls must be reliably paired with food delivery for learning to occur. By giving purr calls during feeding visits at the nest, adults apparently actively condition nestlings to associate these calls with food. This represents a novel form of teaching among nonhuman animals.
An experimental examination of female responses to infant face coloration in rhesus macaques
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In many primates, infants possess distinctive coloration that changes as a function of age. This colour is thought to serve the purpose of eliciting caretaking behaviour from the mother as well as other conspecifics. The present study investigated the responses of adult female rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to pictures of infant faces in relation to infant age and facial coloration. Study animals were shown digitized images of neonates and 5–6-month-old infants displaying either unaltered facial colour, pink neonatal colour, or novel (green) facial colour. While infant and neonate faces of all colours elicited the attention of adult females, pink neonatal facial coloration did not appear to be especially attractive to subjects in contrast with the findings from an earlier study [Higley, J.D., Hopkins, W.D., Hirsch, R.M. Marra, L.M. Suomi S.J., 1987. Preferences of female rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) for infantile coloration. Dev. Psychobiol. 20, 7–18]. The results suggest that infant facial colour is not particularly important in mediating infant attractiveness to rhesus macaque females as previously suggested or that other infantile facial characteristics might be more important than colour in eliciting caretaking behaviours amongst females.

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^∗: Present address: Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, Emory University, 2409 Taylor Lane, Lawrenceville, GA 30243, U.S.A.

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First steps in the macaque world: do rhesus mothers encourage their infants' independent locomotion?

Abstract

Anim. Behav.

Anim. Behav.

Anim. Behav.

Trends Ecol. Evol.

Costs of maternal care: infant-carrying in baboons

Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.

Is there teaching in nonhuman animals?

Q. Rev. Biol.

How Monkeys See the World. Inside the Mind of Another Species

Bees, their Vision, Chemical Senses and Language

Signalling of need by offspring to their parents

Nature, Lond.

Suckling behaviour and fertility in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)

J. Zool., Lond.

Following their companions as a form of exploration for human infants

Child Devel.

Qualities of mother-infant relationships in monkeys

Dynamics of a relationship: rhesus mother-infant ventro-ventral contact

J. comp. physiol. Psychol.

Newly acquired precultural behaviour of the natural troop of Japanese macaques

Primates