Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Grooming for infant handling in tufted capuchin monkeys: a reappraisal of the primate infant market

Tiddi, Barbara, Aureli, Filippo, Schino, Gabriele (2010) Grooming for infant handling in tufted capuchin monkeys: a reappraisal of the primate infant market. Animal Behaviour, 79 (5). pp. 1115-1123. ISSN 0003-3472. (doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.02.008) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:84585)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.02.008

Abstract

Newborn infants can affect female social dynamics, and provide ideal conditions to test the biological market theory and its assumptions. In infant markets, infants are the desired commodity, mothers control access to them, and other females (potential handlers) trade grooming for infant handling. The supply/demand ratio corresponds to the number of available infants per potential handler. Variation in the number of infants causes changes in the supply/demand ratio that can alter the market equilibrium. We investigated whether grooming was interchanged for handling in wild tufted capuchin females, Cebus apella nigritus. Behavioural observations were conducted on 10 mothers in three groups. Potential handlers were strongly attracted to infants and grooming the mothers (specifically, its occurrence rather than its duration) increased their probability of handling infants. However, the number of infants in the group did not affect the amount of grooming needed for access to infants. At least three nonmutually exclusive hypotheses can explain differences from previous findings. First, grooming in capuchin monkeys may represent a signal of benign intent with no market value. Second, dominance relations among handlers may have prevented competition by outbidding among handlers and thus hindered free trade. Third, the increased grooming required by mothers when infants were scarcer may reflect the need to calm more stressed mothers that were the subject of more frequent harassment; since in our study mothers did not appear to be more stressed when fewer infants were available, no effect of the number of infants on grooming by handlers emerged.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.02.008
Uncontrolled keywords: biological market; Cebus apella nigritus; grooming; infant handling; New World primate; tufted capuchin
Subjects: Q Science > QH Natural history
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Anthropology and Conservation
Depositing User: Barbara Tiddi
Date Deposited: 29 Nov 2020 21:48 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:27 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/84585 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Tiddi, Barbara.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.