Vocal greeting during mother-infant reunions in a nocturnal primate, the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus).

ABSTRACT: In human societies, ritualized greeting behavior includes gestural and vocal displays to signal the social acceptance of an encountering person. These displays are universal across cultures suggesting a pre-human origin. Vocal greeting displays are only reported for monkeys and apes with complex social systems, but none of these studies confirmed that greeting signals fulfill all criteria characterizing human greeting behavior. In this study, we analyzed for the first time whether vocal exchanges between mother and infants in a non-human primate fulfill the criteria of human greeting behavior and whether vocal greeting behavior is present in a basal primate with a less complex social system, the gray mouse lemur. By comparing spontaneous leave-takings and reunions, we found that vocal exch

SUBMITTER: Scheumann M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5583258 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature