June 19, 2018 by Jim
Barlow, University of Oregon
Drawn to a behavior she didn't
understand, a UO researcher watching bonobos in a zoo has revealed how young
female bonobos prepare for motherhood.
"After studying bonobos for
several years, I noticed that juveniles and adolescents were obsessed with the
babies," said Klaree Boose, an instructor in the UO Department of
Anthropology. "They played with the babies and carried them around. It
appeared to be more than just play behavior."
Her findings, now online, will be
part of a special issue of the journal Physiology & Behavior. The
study documents how young females acquire maternal skills and forge alliances
that pay off in times of hostility by handling infants, whether they are
related to them or not.
The research, done with captive
bonobos at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio, also explains behaviors that
scientists have seen but only focused on in the wild, said study co-author
Frances White, head of the UO's anthropology department. White has studied
bonobos in their natural habit in Africa for years.
"It is common in the wild to
see infant bonobos be a focus of enormous interest to others, especially to
adolescent bonobos," White said. "It is often noticeable how bonobo mothers are
willing to let others get close and interact with their infants, as compared to
chimpanzees who are more restrictive."
This study, she said, allowed the
team to take that knowledge and explore individual relationships in a way that
has not been done in the wild.
"The Columbus Zoo has done a
wonderful job of copying wild behavior in letting the bonobos divide on a
day-by-day basis into different groupings, much as they do in the wild,"
White said. "This zoo setting made this kind of study, which looks at
normal wild behaviors, possible."
Bonobos in the wild live in a
small area of the Congo Basin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They are
often mistaken as chimpanzees but are a separate species. The females hold
high-ranking positions and often form female-female coalitions that stand up to
males.
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