Social grooming in Barbary macaques

Abstract

Social grooming is one of the most common forms of affiliative behaviour among socially living animals and has been in the centre of interest from the early beginnings of primatology. Social grooming is a behaviour in which social animals, clean or maintain one another's body and many studies focused on investigating the function of grooming behaviour. This thesis consists of general introduction and three studies that investigate social grooming in a population of semi-free ranging Barbary macaques from Gibraltar. The studies are based on original data and the results provide an interesting and new insight into the grooming behaviour in Barbary macaques. The first study focused on grooming patterns among females and we found that grooming was directed up the hierarchy, was affected by friendship and kinship. In the second study we tested the effect of maternal status on grooming among females and results showed that mothers gave less grooming but did not receive more grooming from other females. On the basis of these results we proposed that the observed patterns would be better explained by time constraints posed on mothers, rather than by grooming for infant handling exchange. In the last study we investigated the relationship between grooming and sexual activity between males and females. Our data showed that males as well as females preferred for mating activities those individuals that groom them most.