This article(http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48171/title/Monkey_moms_and_babies_communicate_from_the_start) talks about how the interactions that macaque mothers have with their newborn infants prepares their offspring with socialization skills later in life. Babies often would iniate an interaction by lip smacking and imitating the mother. They mother would also sometimes try to attract the little monkey's attention by bobbing her heard up and down. The researcher, Ferrari believes that "macaque and human babies share an inborn capacity to communicate using emotional displays and gestures, to share experiences with others and to understand adults’ behaviors as having a purpose." Check out this really cool video on a one to one mother to child interaction: http://vimeo.com/6966495
Anyways, I found it very interesting that studies that observe mother to infant behavior have been done on humans only about 40 years ago. It would be nice to find out how these interactions play out in other primates and how greatly they influence the offspring.
Posted by Alliam Ortiz
How adorable! It makes sense that the mothers are trying to teach their young behaviors that they'll learn later in life- we just saw that with the foals. How does lip smacking relate to an adult behavior? It's really interesting how we can see this behavior, which we can obviously relate to, in our most related cousin in the primates too. I agree that it would be a great question of if this behavior is seen in other primates.
ReplyDeletePosted by Christine Rega
It's so interesting that both humans and monkeys use facial expressions to communicate emotions. We are so closely related that it's sometimes surprising how alike we are. Have any studies been done that test how a monkey socializes without having gone through this imitation interactions early in life?
ReplyDelete-Tricia Carlson
This was really interesting. Have any studies been done to look for these interactions in other primates? Even though we're so closely related, it's still incredible to see such a human behavior in a primate.
ReplyDelete-Sarah Benjamin