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Washington, Oct. 15 According to a study of gorillas, men are more successful at breeding when they spend more time looking after children, not just theirs.
Researchers have already discovered that wild male mountain gorillas living in Rwanda are acting in a rather unusual way for a mammal: they help to care for all children in their social group, whether or not they are fathers.
The purpose of the new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, was to understand why.
"Mountain gorillas and humans are the only great apes in which men regularly develop close social ties with children, so find out what mountain gorillas are doing and why they help us understand how men may have started. to take a more engaged form of fatherhood, "said Stacy Rosenbaum, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University in the United States.
The results are contrary to what we generally think of male mountain gorillas – huge, competitive and with breeding in the group dominated by a single alpha male.
"Men spend a lot of time with groups of children – and those who groom and rest more with them have more opportunities in procreation," said Christopher Kuzawa, a professor at the University of Toronto. Northwestern University.
"One likely interpretation is that women choose to marry men based on these interactions," said Kuzawa.
"We have long known that male mountain gorillas compete for access to females and mating opportunities, but this new data suggests that they may have a more diverse strategy," Rosenbaum said.
"Even after several checks for the ranks of domination, the age and the number of chances of reproduction that they have, men who have these ties to children have much more success," he said. he declares.
This research suggests an alternative path through which paternity behaviors may have evolved in our own species, said Rosenbaum.
"Traditionally, we thought that child care depended on a specific social structure, monogamy, because it allowed men to look after their own children.
"Our data suggest that there is an alternative path through which evolution can generate this behavior, even when men may not know who their offspring is," Rosenbaum said.
This suggests that similar behaviors may have played an important role in the initial establishment of paternity behaviors in distant human ancestors, researchers said.
They are currently studying whether hormones could help facilitate these male behaviors, as they do in humans.
"In men, testosterone decreases as men become fathers, and this would help focus their attention on the needs of the newborn," Kuzawa said. SAR
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