AssetID: 53596885
Headline: RAW VIDEO: Chimpanzees Keep Playing With Their Kids Through Tough Times
Caption: A new study published in Current Biology found that over 10 years of observation, a population of chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda continued to play through good times and bad. The study broadly concluded that while adult chimps often play – and young chimps play a lot – food scarcity in the population prompted adults to put aside mutual play and focus on survival. However, mother chimps continued to play with their young through crisis – tickling, chasing, and playing ‘aeroplane’. The mothers acted as their kids’ primary playmates, taking on an indispensable role in fostering the young chimps’ development even during times of food scarcity. “The research on play ties into an effort to understand the evolution of leadership among chimps,” assistant professor of anthropology and biology Zarin Machanda said of the study. “We were trying to see whether chimps have only one pathway to leadership, which has always been assumed to be aggressiveness, or whether play and other behaviours build multiple dimensions of character that might make them more or less successful.” Zarin explained why some primates play throughout life while others don’t. “I think what sets primates apart is that they spend more time growing up compared to other mammals,” she said. “They also have highly developed brains and live in structured groups, with very specific rules governing interactions between individuals. Play permits them to build not only physical skills, but also the skills of social interaction.” She also theorised that chimp mothers may continue to play with their children and not other adults because a group of around 60 chimps may break off entirely into smaller families for days or weeks while food is scarce. “But when they’re doing that, they are also limiting the ability of their young ones to play with others, and the moms become the primary playmates,” Harvard University human evolutionary biology fellow Kris Sabbi added. “They’re trading off that lower feeding competition in the larger group for more time and energy being spent playing with their little ones.” This break-away response may also deprive some young chimps of different types of play. “It’s not uncommon to see male chimps to engage in more aggressive types of play, while females are doing a type of play related to parenting,” Zarin noted. “You see them practise carrying things — a kind of preparation for future maternal behaviour. Males often size each other up, and when they hit their second birthday, play style changes and can get rougher.” Juveniles and older infant males usually prefer playing with their mothers, then move on to other males when they get older. “If they’re playing with somebody and it starts to get a little bit too rough, they’ll switch it up and go back to playing with mom, because at the end of the day it’s a very safe place,” Kris detailed. “If we compare to humans, it’s very easy to find lots of evidence in the child psychology literature for how important it is for human mothers and fathers to be playing with their children, especially at really young ages. Moms and dads are important first play partners before kids branch out into their own social networks.”
Keywords: photo,feature,photo feature,photo story,chimpanzee,uganda,natural world,science
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