The Occurrence of Postconflict Skills in Captive Immature Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Samina H Farooqi,Nicola F Koyama

doi:10.1007/s10764-016-9893-1

Samina H Farooqi, Nicola F Koyama

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-016-9893-1

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Abstract

Conflict management strategies can reduce costs of aggressive competition in group-living animals. Postconflict behaviors such as reconciliation and third-party postconflict affiliation are widely accepted as social skills in primates and have been demonstrated in many species. Although immature primates possess a repertoire of species-specific behaviors, it is thought that they gradually develop appropriate social skills throughout prolonged juvenility to establish and maintain complex social relationships within their group. We examined the occurrence of postconflict skills in five immature chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) over 15 mo, focusing on interactions that were not with the subject’s mother. We observed reconciliation, with conciliatory tendencies comparable to adults, and provide the first evidence that captive immature chimpanzees commonly reconciled using social play. However, immatures were not more likely to reconcile valuable than nonvaluable relationships. We also observed third party postconflict affiliation although at a lower level than reported for adults. Our results provide evidence for postconflict skills in immature chimpanzees but the lack of higher conciliatory tendency with valuable partners and low occurrence of third-party affiliation indicates extended juvenility may be required refine these skills. Further work is needed to investigate whether these behaviors have the same function and effectiveness as those found in adults.

Highlights

Living in a group inevitably involves competition for limited resources between conspecifics
Following the PC–MC method, we found the proportion of attracted pairs (0.43 ± 0.07) was significantly higher than the proportion of dispersed pairs (0.12 ± 0.03, t = 8.2, P < 0.001), indicating that the majority of affiliative contacts between the opponents occurred earlier in the PC than in the MC and demonstrating the occurrence of reconciliation (Hypothesis 1a)
When we selected only conflicts between immatures (N = 61) we found that the proportion of attracted pairs (0.53 ± 0.12) remained higher than the proportion of dispersed pairs (0.18 ± 0.05, t = 4.89, P = 0.008), demonstrating the occurrence of reconciliation between immatures

Summary

Introduction

Living in a group inevitably involves competition for limited resources between conspecifics. Conflict management strategies provide one way to alleviate these negative consequences They include friendly postconflict reunion between former opponents, known as reconciliation, and third-party postconflict affiliation between a bystander and victim of aggression, that has been referred to functionally as consolation (De Waal and van Roosmalen 1979). Such behavioral strategies are viewed as part of a suite of social skills (Kempes et al 2009) in primates that are learned during a Bsocialization period^ in infancy (Bekoff 2001) and develop through a period of extended primate juvenility (de Waal 1989; Goodall 1986; Joffe 1997; Lonsdorf and Ross 2012; Pagel and Harvey 1993; Poirier and Smith 1974; Watts and Pusey 2002). The play of orphaned chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) juveniles was more likely to result in aggression than the play of mother-reared juveniles, strengthening the idea that social skills are learned in early infancy (Van Leeuwen et al 2014)

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