Body Site and Body Orientation Preferences during Social Grooming: A Comparison between Wild and Captive Chimpanzees and Bonobos

Abstract

Grooming site preferences have been relatively well studied in monkey species in order to investigate the function of social grooming. They are not only influenced by the amount of ectoparasites, but also by different social variables such as the dominance rank between individuals or their levels of affiliation. However, studies on this topic mainly come from monkey species, with almost no report on great apes. This study aimed to explore whether body site and body orientation preferences during social grooming show species-specific differences (bonobos vs. chimpanzees) and environment-specific differences (captivity vs. wild). Results showed that bonobos groomed the head, the front and faced each other more often than chimpanzees, while chimpanzees groomed the back, anogenitals and more frequently in face-to-back positions. Moreover, captive individuals were found to groom facing one another more often than wild ones, whereas wild individuals groomed the back and in face-to-back positions more. While future studies should expand their scope to include more populations per condition, our preliminary 2 by 2 comparison study highlights the influence of (i) species-specific social differences such as social tolerance, social attention and facial communication, and (ii) socioenvironmental constraints such as risk of predation, spatial crowding and levels of hygiene, that might be the two important factors determining the grooming patterns in two Panspecies.