A prosocial function of head-gaze aversion and head-cocking in common marmosets.

ABSTRACT: Gaze aversion is a behavior adopted by several mammalian and non-mammalian species in response to eye contact, and is usually interpreted as a reaction to a perceived threat. Unlike many other primate species, common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) are thought to have a high tolerance for direct gaze, barely exhibiting gaze avoidance towards conspecifics and humans. Here we show that this does not hold for marmosets interacting with a familiar experimenter who suddenly establishes eye contact in a playful interaction (peekaboo). Video footage synchronously recorded from the perspective of the marmoset and the experimenter showed that the monkeys consistently alternated between eye contact and head-gaze aversion, and that these responses were often preceded by head-cocking. We hypothesize th

SUBMITTER: Spadacenta S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9463209 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature