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Male wild gorillas may be more successful in breeding if they spend more time caring for their offspring or even other gorillas.
Researchers at Northwestern University, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund investigated why wild Rwandan mountain gorillas spent so much time with children in their group, even though they did not know who their father was. Posted in Scientific reports on nature On Monday, the study showed how these male gorillas are doing better at breeding and challenging the assumptions about paternal care in primates.
"About 15 years ago, I worked as a research assistant for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, studying the behavior of male gorillas. I was very struck by the time spent together by men and children, even in large groups where several men could be the father, "said Stacy Rosenbaum, postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and senior author of the # 39; study. Newsweek. "It looked a lot like" paternity "in humans, which is not something we really think that monkeys indulge in."
Rosenbaum discovered in a study published a few years ago that male gorillas do not treat their own biological children in the same way as other children in their group. So she decided to understand why they interact so differently from many others. mammals.
The new study found that male gorillas that groom and rest more with the group's young have more breeding opportunities with female gorillas. The male gorillas who spent the most time with the children generated five times more children than the gorillas who spent the least time with the children. This could be due to the fact that females choose to breed with male gorillas because of their interactions with youngsters.
"We found this result for the first time more than three years ago. I was quite skeptical about the reality, so we waited until we got more results in paternity. And of course, not only was the relationship still there, but it became stronger, "said Rosenbaum.
Male mountain gorillas are known to compete for breeding opportunities, but this study shows that competition may be more complex than previously thought. Even after the researchers checked their results for their age, dominance, and number of breeding chances, the gorillas that bonded with the children in the group were much more successful.
In humans, studies have shown that testosterone decreases in men when they become fathers. If this is also true for gorillas, male gorillas with lower testosterone levels may have trouble competing for a new chance of breeding, and scientists may find even more reasons for this behavior.
"Our results actually reflect a pathway through which the type of father behavior we see in modern humans could have imposed among our missing parents," Rosenbaum explained. "Human paternity is undeniably expensive – men invest a lot in their children, in cultures around the world. But this research shows a path that selection could have taken to help establish social links between men and infants, among our fossil parents. "
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