Adriana Rocha Anthropology December 4th, 2013

Primate Social Behavior Primate: any member of the group of animals that includes human beings, apes, and monkeys. (Merriam-Webster) Over the years, many people have speculated whether or not we share common behavioral traits with primates. Primatologists all over the world ask one question about social behavior with primates, why are primates social? In many different social groups individual primates communicate with one another and interact in a friendly manner and also in an agonistic ways. Primates like to express themselves socially through a range of behaviors. The most common way that primates like to express themselves is through touching, hugging, mouthing, mounting, lip smacking, vocalizing, greeting, and grooming (Larsen). Like humans, primates use these kinds of signals to show different kinds of relationships with one another. There are different residence patterns among primates. Some examples would be polygynous, where there is one male in a group and many females and their offspring. Another example would be polyandrous, where there is one female and several males and their offspring. When it comes to reproduction, primates all vary differently. Primate reproductive strategies for males are much more different than they are for females, both male and female each have a different way of going about reproductive strategies and interests. As is the norm for males, they tend to compete with each other with different strategies to have a female partner to produce and off spring. Natural selection plays a big role for males because of their distinct dimorphism.

Since males and females have many different roles when it comes to reproduction, it is believed that the females disperse more energy in their reproductive roles; because of this some different groups of primates partake in competition where the male competes for different female primates. Some research has shown that body dimorphism is larger in groups when males are competing for reproductive purposes. There are many different reproductive strategies that primates use; another common one would be infanticide. Infanticide is when a male kills a nursing infant so the mother of that offspring stops lactating and begins ovulating again, thus being able to reproduce again. Whereas males compete with each other for mates, females compete with each other for resources that enable them to care for young. In various New World and Old World monkeys, including macaques and some baboons, the competition for resources happens within the context of stable dominance hierarchies. (Larsen) One interesting study showed how a certain type of primates, specifically the Bonobos, shows how primates social behavior can be very similar to human like behaviors. Not only does it show that but it also shows that primates use gestures to communicate. Bonobos at the Leipzig Zoo were filmed shaking their heads "no" in disapproval in order to get infants to stop playing with their food (instead of eating it) or to keep an infant from straying. In one instance, a mother retrieved her baby bonobo from an attempt to climb a nearby tree. The infant made continual efforts to scale the tree, with Mom bringing her back each time. The final attempt ended with the mama pulling her infant by the leg and shaking her head while looking at the baby. While the researchers aren't sure whether the bonobos really mean "no" in their head shakes, the results do hint the behavior may be an early precursor to negative head-shaking gestures in humans, according to study researcher Christel Schneider of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. (Byner)

Vocalization is another key social behavior primates use to communicate. All primates, no matter how big or small they may be, are vocal. Just like humans, primates use vocalization to communicate when there is danger and to call to one another. Primates use a range of facial displays and body part movements as communication signals, sometimes combined with tactile components. Gorilla chest beating and Rhesus monkeys bared-teeth displays are examples of how different species express social rank with visual signals. Current research has focused much on gestures, which are interesting because of their partly flexible, partly species-specific use in a variety of social contexts. Gestures have been studied mainly in great apes, where considerable variation between individuals and groups has been found. Whether some of this variation is socially learned and thus potentially cultural' is still an unresolved question. A more established finding is that, during gesturing, apes take into account each other's attention and deploy their signals accordingly (Call & Tomasello 2007; Figure 1). Interestingly, however, there is almost no evidence that primate gestures, or combinations thereof, carry symbolic meaning by referring to external entities (Cartmill & Byrne 2010). Instead, they appear to function primarily to facilitate ongoing social interactions, to bond with others, or to persuade others to behave in a desired way. (Zuberbuhler) Being social is very important to primates in groups. One of the biggest reasons this is important is because of predation. Big snakes are common predators, as well as crocodiles waiting at waterholes. There are three reasons for this. First, in social groups there are more individuals looking out for predators and thus predators will be detected more quickly. Second, living in a group decreases each individual's chance of being preyed upon due to an effect called "geometry for the selfish herd" (Hamilton 1971): this states that the larger the group (e.g., 100 versus 10), the lower each individual's chance (1/100 versus 1/10) of becoming prey. Third,

individuals in groups can collectively mob predators and successfully drive them away, whereas lone individuals cannot. (Swedell) The Theory underlying the study of primate social behavior is simple. That is, as recognized by the American biologist Edward O. Wilson in his study of animals generally primate social behavior is influenced by evolution. Basically, natural selection favors primate behaviors that enhance survival and reproduction. In this way, the genes of individuals who engage in those behaviors pass from generation to generation (Larsen).

Works Cited
Byner, Jeanna. 8 Humanlike Behaviors of Primates. 29 07 2011. 29 11 2013 <http://www.livescience.com/15309-humanlike-behaviors-primates.html>. Larsen, Clark Spencer. Our Origins. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., n.d. Merriam-Webster. 27 11 2013 <http://merriam-webster.com/dictionary/primate>. Swedell, Larissa. Primate Sociality and Social Systems . 2012. 01 12 2013 <http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/primate-sociality-and-socialsystems-58068905>. Zuberbuhler, Klaus. Knowledge Project. 2012. 29 11 2013 <http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/primate-communication67560503>.