While it’s tempting to assign some larger significance to the behavior, Wrangham said studies this far haven’t been able to show whether high-arm grooming carries any social meaning. "This is the first time anyone has realized this, and the pattern is delightfully clear." "Even when they’re adults, even after their mothers are long dead, they still do it the same way their mother did it." Wrangham said.
And since young chimps may groom almost exclusively with their mothers until about age 12, Wrangham said it’s hardly any wonder that the grooming style stays with them into adulthood.
#Chimpanzee hand groom clasp how to#
Like human children, young chimps learn many behaviors from their mothers, from which foods to eat to how to use tools, and - among mothers who engage in it - how to perform high-arm grooming. The chimpanzees are copying their mothers, not identifying with the larger community. In fact, he said, the only connection researchers were able to identify was the maternal one. "The pattern varies widely within the group, it’s not closely associated with friendship, it doesn’t vary by age or sex, and it does not depend on how long an individual has been in the community." But what we’re showing with this paper is that none of the obvious possibilities figure out," Wrangham said. "Alternatively, people have suggested that maybe it signals a special type of social relationship if two individuals do it more often with one another. "People often see these types of strange behaviors we see in chimps and wonder if it is some sort of group identification sign.’’ "This type of behavior, which seems so trivial in many ways - whether you clasp hands or cross arms - has been suggested as signaling membership in a group," Wrangham said. To find out, Wrangham and colleagues collected the most detailed data ever on how - and how often - chimps in a particular population engaged in high-arm grooming, and they quickly realized that nearly all previous theories about the behavior were wrong.
"When a young female joins a new group does she look at what everyone else is doing.and then do what the rest of the group does for the rest of her life ?" "So what we wanted to understand was what’s responsible for the variation in palm-to-palm clasping," Wrangham said. It’s not clear, however, whether any significance should be attached to those differences - at present, researchers have no clear answer as to why chimps engage in high-arm grooming, or what benefits they get from it. The behavior has been observed in eight chimp populations across Africa, Wrangham said, each of which show differing rates of clasping and non-clasping, but is notably absent in three other well-studied populations. Though brief - sessions average only about 45 seconds - chimps have been observed in the behavior as many as ten times a day.īut while grooming behavior is universal among chimps, high-arm grooming is not. As two chimps groom each other, each raise one arm and either clasp hands or cross their arms as they continue to groom. Known as "high-arm grooming," the behavior occurs during the regular grooming sessions chimps engage in throughout the day. "It’s very charming, really - our oldest known son was almost 40 years old, still doing what his long-dead mother did." "I think what it really shows is how strong the maternal influence is," Wrangham said. The study is described in a November 21 paper in Current Biology. Once learned, chimps continued to perform the behavior the same way, long after the death of their mothers. Led by Richard Wrangham, Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, a group of researchers has shown, for the first time, that chimpanzees learn certain grooming styles from their mothers.
Led by Richard Wrangham, Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, a group of researchers has shown, for the first time, that chimpanzees learn certain grooming styles (.) When it comes to learning how to behave, though, humans aren’t alone in looking to our Moms. Think of all the things your mom taught you - sit up straight, close your mouth when you chew your food, remember to say please and thank you.the list goes on. Chimps perform grooming behavior the same way their mothers did.