Prior experience of risk and individual differences in enterprise shown by rhesus monkey infants in the second half of their first year

Autor: Simpson, M., Gore, M., Janus, M., Rayment, F.
Zdroj: Primates; October 1989, Vol. 30 Issue: 4 p493-509, 17p
Abstrakt: Abstract: A review of the literature suggested that animals exposed to more risk in their social groups should be more enterprising. Rhesus monkey infants of 37 to 44 weeks were attracted to bait in places out of their mothers' reach. The tests were run in the home pen, in the absence of social companions apart from a sibling in its second year of life, if present. In each test the bait was a sawdust and grain mixture, with two or three raisins, and enterprise was measured in terms of the number of raisins taken. Before the test period, the infants had lived in small stable captive social groups. Infants of non-top-ranking mothers took more raisins than infants of top-ranking mothers, if infants subject to high levels of aggression from their own mothers or from the adult males in their groups, were excluded. Observations of the group in a competitive foraging situation confirmed that non-to-ranking infants should be at greater risk than top-ranking ones. The infants receiving notably high levels of aggression from their mothers or the adult males in their groups took more raisins than the remainder. These results are consistent with the view that experience of risk in a social group can promote enterprise in rhesus monkey infants of less than a year old. The problems of assessing “risk” faced by socially living animals, and the mechanisms whereby experience of risk could enhance enterprise, ere discussed.
Databáze: Supplemental Index
Externí odkaz: