Impartial third-party interventions in captive chimpanzees: a reflection of community concern.

ABSTRACT: Because conflicts among social group members are inevitable, their management is crucial for group stability. The rarest and most interesting form of conflict management is policing, i.e., impartial interventions by bystanders, which is of considerable interest due to its potentially moral nature. Here, we provide descriptive and quantitative data on policing in captive chimpanzees. First, we report on a high rate of policing in one captive group characterized by recently introduced females and a rank reversal between two males. We explored the influence of various factors on the occurrence of policing. The results show that only the alpha and beta males acted as arbitrators using manifold tactics to control conflicts, and that their interventions strongly depended on conflict complexity.

SUBMITTER: von Rohr CR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3296710 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature