Begging and social tolerance: Food solicitation tactics in young chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in the wild

Publication date: Available online 22 November 2019Source: Evolution and Human BehaviorAuthor(s): Marlen Fröhlich, Gudrun Müller, Claudia Zeiträg, Roman M. Wittig, Simone PikaAbstractThe substantial role of food sharing in human evolution has been widely recognized, and food-soliciting tactics may have been critical in facilitating these transfers. Great apes, our closest living relatives, also use food-soliciting tactics to obtain food from both kin and non-kin. However, the individual and social factors involved in requests for and subsequent transfers of food have been relatively little studied. Here, we examined which tactics (e.g., tactile gestures, taking actions, and vocalizations) infant chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) employ to solicit food from their conspecifics as well as the success of obtaining food. Using a multimodal approach, we focused on food-related interactions of 14 chimpanzee infants of two different subspecies (P. t. schweinfurthii/verus) living in the communities of Kanyawara, Uganda, and Taï South, Côte d'Ivoire. Overall, we found that infants' solicitation tactics included mainly visual or tactile gestural requests and taking attempts, while vocalizations and gestures involving auditory components were rarely used. When addressing non-maternal conspecifics, infants used more visual gestures with age to solicit food. If food was solicited from mothers or maternal kin, infants predominantly begged for food via (mechanically effective) taking attemp...
Source: Evolution and Human Behavior - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research