Social Attention in the Two Species of Pan: Bonobos Make More Eye Contact than Chimpanzees.

ABSTRACT: Humans' two closest primate living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, differ behaviorally, cognitively, and emotionally in several ways despite their general similarities. While bonobos show more affiliative behaviors towards conspecifics, chimpanzees display more overt and severe aggression against conspecifics. From a cognitive standpoint, bonobos perform better in social coordination, gaze-following and food-related cooperation, while chimpanzees excel in tasks requiring extractive foraging skills. We hypothesized that attention and motivation play an important role in shaping the species differences in behavior, cognition, and emotion. Thus, we predicted that bonobos would pay more attention to the other individuals' face and eyes, as those are related to social affiliation and social

SUBMITTER: Kano F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4468221 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature