Comedy | October 11, 2009 | 9 comments

Monkey Moms Act Like Human Moms

source: http://www.livescience.com/culture/091008-monkey-mamas.html

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"he intense, special exchanges that human mothers share with their newborn infants might have deep roots all the way back in monkeys.

Rhesus macaques and their offspring interact in the first month of life in ways much like what humans often do, scientists now suggest.

"What does a mother or father do when looking at their own baby?" asked researcher Pier Francesco Ferrari, a behavioral biologist and neuroscientist at the University of Parma in Italy. "They smile at them and exaggerate their gestures, modify their voice pitch — so-called 'motherese' — and kiss them. What we found in mother macaques is very similar — they exaggerate their gestures, 'kiss' their baby, and have sustained mutual gaze."

Past research has shown these emotional interactions go both ways in humans — newborns are sensitive to their mother's expressions, movements, and voice, and engage their parents in much the same way. For years, these capacities were basically considered unique to humans, although perhaps shared to some extent with chimpanzees.

Now Ferrari and his colleagues extend these skills to macaques, "suggesting the origins of these behaviors actually goes way back," he told LiveScience. (Rhesus monkey ancestors diverged from those of humans roughly 25 million years ago, while chimpanzees diverged from our lineage 6 million years ago.)

Intriguingly, these exchanges virtually disappeared when infants turned about one month old.

"It's quite puzzling," Ferrari said, "but we should consider that macaque development is much faster that of humans. Motor competences of a two-week-old macaque could be compared to an eight- to twelve-month-old human infant. Thus, independence from the mother occurs very early. What happens next in the first and second month of life is that infants become more interested in interacting with their same-age peers."

This discovery suggests that by studying monkeys, scientists might get insights into the evolution of parental care and infant development in humans."
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