![]() ![]() ![]() In this study, Funkhouser and colleagues captured detailed behavioral data from the observation of captive chimpanzees at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Cle Elum, Wash., and of wild Tibetan macaques of Mt. “This is precisely the problem we set out to explore,” Funkhouser said. However, investigators often differ in their definitions of dominance, the methods used to derive dominance and the statistical techniques used to rank individuals in a group. (Photo: Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest)Īcross the animal kingdom, the term “social dominance” has been widely used as a descriptive shorthand to convey the behavioral characteristics and power status of individual animals and simplify the overall structure of social relationships within groups. An adult female chimpanzee, Jamie (age 38), maintains her high dominance rank through frequent aggressive interactions at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Cle Elum, Wash. As the primate species with the most complex sociality, we humans should understand this pretty well,” he said. “Primate social relationships also are highly individualized and dependent on the partners involved and the social setting in which the interaction takes place. ![]() “Nor do our relationships readily transfer between settings the aggressive or confrontational interactions we engage in with some are much different than the prosocial interactions we share with our spouse and best friends. “The social relationships humans share with others cannot be accurately represented in simply ‘dominant’ or ‘subordinate’ terms,” Funkhouser said. Adult female chimpanzees Missy (age 41) and Annie (age 42) share strong affiliative bonds at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Cle Elum, Wash. While Funkhouser and colleagues affirm the importance of understanding these relationships, they argue that many long-established methodologies for assessing primate power struggles - observations of fighting over food or mates - may be too one-dimensional to capture the very complex social dynamics of primate relationships. Primatologists, such as Jane Goodall, Biruté Galdikas and Dian Fossey, have been studying primate behavior for decades, so the idea that chimpanzees and other primates have complex social relationships is nothing new. “It also suggests that existing research techniques for observing and measuring dominance are missing components of complexity that are critical for understanding the layers of diverse social relationships we see in the animal kingdom, our own human societies included,” Funkhouser said. “Our study confirms that the social relationships of nonhuman primates are extremely complicated, nuanced and multi-faceted,” said Jake Funkhouser, lead author of the study and an anthropology doctoral student in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Anyone who peruses relationship settings on social media knows that our interactions with other humans can be intricate, but a new study in Nature: Scientific Reports suggests that researchers may be overlooking some of these same complexities in the social relations of our closest primate relatives, such as chimpanzees and macaques. ![]()
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