Social relationships and caregiving behavior between recently orphaned chimpanzee siblings.

ABSTRACT: When their mothers die, chimpanzees often adopt younger vulnerable siblings who survive with their care. This phenomenon has been widely reported, but few studies provide details regarding how sibling relationships change immediately following the deaths of their mothers. A disease outbreak that killed several females at Ngogo in Kibale National Park, Uganda, furnished an opportunity to document how maternal death influenced the social relationships of siblings. We describe social interactions between four adolescent and young adult males and their younger immature maternal siblings 9 months before and 8 months after their mothers died. We also show how the behavior of individuals in the four recently orphaned sibling pairs contrasts to the behavior displayed by chimpanzees in 30 sibling p

SUBMITTER: Reddy RB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7136970 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature