Non-kin adoption in the common vampire bat.

ABSTRACT: Individual animals across many different species occasionally 'adopt' unrelated, orphaned offspring. Although adoption may be best explained as a by-product of adaptive traits that enhance parental care or promote the development of parental skills, one factor that is possibly important for the likelihood of adoption is the history of cooperative interactions between the mother, adopted offspring and adopter. Using 652 h of behavioural samples collected over four months, we describe patterns of allogrooming and food sharing before and after an instance of non-kin adoption between two adult female common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) that were captured from distant sites (340 km apart) and introduced to one another in captivity. The first female died from an illness 19 days after

SUBMITTER: Razik I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8074576 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature