![]() The results confirm a decades-old hypothesis, that in many animals that live in groups, the hazards of inbreeding push one sex or the other to start their families elsewhere. “Breeding with a brother is a pretty costly mistake,” Walker said. For the chimpanzees at Gombe, only one of four known offspring of such close matings made it to adulthood. High-ranking males have been known to coerce their sisters into mating with them. ![]() But there are exceptions, said Walker, a research assistant professor of behavioral ecology at North Carolina State University. It was only when the researchers looked more closely at the females’ family members that the split began to reveal itself: specifically, they found that females with more brothers were more likely to leave - presumably because they risk inbreeding if they stay.īrothers and sisters from the same mom usually show little interest in each other, avoiding sex with close kin. ![]() In the study, the team found very little difference between females who left and those who stayed in terms of things like diet quality, crowding, or the number of unrelated males around when females reached maturity, which suggests they don’t leave due to competition for food or lack of suitable mates. Now, thanks to Pusey’s efforts to compile and digitize the data and put it all in one database, researchers are starting to find answers. She and colleagues first noticed the pattern at Gombe in the 1970s, but because female chimpanzees don't leave home until between the ages of 11 and 13, it would take years of observation to unravel the reasons behind it. “It has driven my research for decades.”ĭifferences between the sexes in migratory patterns are widespread in mammals and birds, Pusey said. So why do movers move away and stayers stay put? “I’ve always been intrigued by that question,” said Pusey, professor emeritus of evolutionary anthropology at Duke. They also get a later start on motherhood. Compared to stay-at-home females, those who leave are often attacked by resident females when they arrive in a new group. Immigrants risk a great deal - leaving behind the familiar faces and comforts of home to strike out alone on a perilous journey, only to face multiple challenges upon arrival. Leaving home is hard, and no less so for a chimp. But in Gombe National Park, some chimpanzee females stay put instead of moving out. 20 in the journal Current Biology, primatologists Kara Walker and Anne Pusey analyzed 45 years of dawn-to-dusk observations for 31 female chimpanzees born in Gombe National Park in Tanzania, where Pusey began working with Jane Goodall in 1970.Ĭhimps are unusual among mammals in that daughters, not sons, typically pick up their roots at puberty and move away from their families. The study suggests that the perks of having a powerful mom can make it worthwhile for some females to stay and reproduce in the same group where they grew up, despite the risks of inbreeding with male relatives.įor the research, published Jan. New findings from researchers at Duke University and North Carolina State University show that female chimpanzees with high-ranking mothers are more likely to be homebodies. But some chimp females seem less willing to cut the apron strings. In chimpanzee society, males spend their entire lives in the group where they were born, cooperating to defend their territory, while females tend to move away.
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