Playing together, laughing together: rapid facial mimicry and social sensitivity in lowland gorillas.

ABSTRACT: In nonhuman animals, the phenomenon of rapid facial mimicry (RFM)-the automatic, involuntary, and rapid (<1 s) replication of others' facial expressions-has been mainly investigated in the playful domain. In immature lowland gorillas Gorilla gorilla gorilla both play face (PF) and full PF (FPF) are rapidly mimicked between the players. This makes the species suitable to test hypotheses on the factors influencing RFM during play. The observations on 3 captive groups of lowland gorillas (N = 27) revealed that contrary to expectations, the closeness of social bond negatively influenced the occurrence of RFM but it did not affect either RFM latency or its overlapping index (OVERLAP). RFM was affected by the degree of symmetry of play fighting: the more balanced the session, the h

SUBMITTER: Bresciani C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9616060 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature