Primates adjust grooming to their social environment

Date:  July 11, 2018

Source:  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Summary:

Researcher show that wild chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys, two primate species who live in complex social groups, choose their grooming partners based on a variety of criteria, including their social relationship with them and their potential partner's dominance rank. In particular, individuals of both species avoided grooming group mates whose friends were among the bystanders, as grooming might be interrupted.

Read on  

Chimpanzees modify grooming behavior when near higher ranking members

Date: June 21, 2017

Source: University of Kent

Research by Dr Nicholas Newton-Fisher from the University of Kent has found chimpanzees modify their interactions with other chimpanzees if higher ranking members of their community are nearby.

Dr Newton-Fisher, based in the School of Anthropology and Conservation (SAC) at Kent, and Stefano Kaburu, from the Department of Population Health and Reproduction, School of Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis, University of California and formerly of SAC, observed grooming interactions between members of a community of chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Western Uganda.

Read on 

New insights on how bees battle deadly varroa mite by grooming

Date: June 13, 2016

Source: Taylor & Francis

In a new study published in the Journal of Apicultural Research, scientists have compared the ability of two strains of honey bees to defend themselves against the parasitic mite varroa by grooming the mites from their bodies.

The mite Varroa destructor is generally considered to be the greatest threat to honey bees worldwide because it transmits virus diseases which lead to colony death. Treatments by various chemicals have become less effective in recent years because the mites have become resistant to them. This has led to attempts to breed strains of bee that are resistant to the mite. One of the possible mechanisms of resistance is "grooming" behaviour, where bees brush bees from themselves (autogrooming) or brush bees from their nestmates (allogrooming). It has long been known that different strains of bee differ in their resistance to varroa. In particular so-called Africanized bees (hybrids of Apis mellifera scutellata) bees appear to have more resistance than European strains.

Ciro Invernizzi and colleagues from the Facultad de Ciencias, Montevideo, Uruguay, compared grooming behaviour in Italian (Apis mellifera ligustica) and Africanized bees. They found that at the individual level, Africanized bees showed a higher total number of reaction behaviours to V. destructor than did Italian bees, and colonies of Africanized bees showed a higher proportion of injured mites than colonies of Italian bees did.

Continued …

Baboons groom early in day to get benefits later

Date:

July 11, 2014

Source:

Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen

Summary:

Social animals often develop relationships with other group members to reduce aggression and gain access to scarce resources. In wild chacma baboons the strategy for grooming activities shows a certain pattern across the day. new insights highlight the importance of understanding the full range of time periods over which social strategies may be optimized. Such knowledge is crucial when studying the social behavior and strategies of group-living animals.

Continued

Insects groom to improve sense of smell

By Ella Davies, Reporter, BBC Nature

Cockroaches groom to improve their sense of smell, scientists say.

The insects are known to manipulate their antennae, the protrusions on their head which they use to sense the smells, temperature and physical layout of their environment.

US researchers found that the cockroaches groom to wipe away secretions that would otherwise interfere with their sense of smell.

They also identified the same behaviour in carpenter ants and houseflies.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The insect antenna is full of sensory structures, called sensilla, used by insects to gather information about their surroundings, which is essential for their survival," said Dr Katalin Boroczky from the North Carolina State University, US, who authored the study.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/21275518

Chimp 'Secret Handshakes' May Be Cultural

Chimpanzees that engage in unusual hand-holding behavior during grooming may be showing off a little culture, new research suggests.

These chimp handshakes, which are seen only among some of the primates, seem to differ from group to group in ways that aren't dependent on genetics or environment. That leaves cultural differences between groups as a possible explanation for why and how the hand-holding occurs.

"We think that this at least indicates that chimpanzees do not only respond to their environment instinctively or based on genetic predisposition," said study researcher Edwin van Leeuwen, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. Nor do they learn in a vacuum, van Leeuwen told LiveScience.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/22765-chimp-handshakes-grooming-cultural.html

Fun-loving bears line up and get ready to do the conga

While most bears have a fearsome and dangerous reputation, these young cubs appear to have the same outlook on life as the Jungle Book's laidback fictional character Baloo.

They may as well have all been singing the film's hit song I Wanna Be Like You as one bear after the next began forming a conga line.

The cute clip shows ten of the baby bears lining up for a spot of grooming, with each one licking the back of another's head.

Over 150,000 people have watched the 51-second recording on video-sharing website YouTube where it has received hundreds of likes.

One amused fan commented: 'I was expecting Bear Grylls to show up and get in the line.'

While another added: 'Im sat here crying with laughter.... brilliant !'

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/898873-fun-loving-bears-line-up-and-get-ready-to-do-the-conga