New study: Chimp moms play with kids through good times and bad
March 15, 2024 - Mary Beth King
When it comes to nurturing their young, mother chimpanzees go the extra mile, according to a new study. Using 10 years of observational data on wild chimpanzees, researchers found that while adults often play, and young chimps play a lot, when food gets scarce, the adults put mutual play aside and focus on survival.
But in the meantime, mother chimps continue to be their offspring’s primary playmates, tickling and chasing. That suggests the mother chimps take on an indispensable role fostering their young’s physical and social development even when they are under food stress.
The study observations took place in Kibale National Park in Uganda. The study analysis, titled Ecological variation in adult social play reveals a hidden cost of motherhood for wild chimpanzees and published in Current Biology, was led by Kris Sabbi, who graduated from The University of New Mexico with a Ph.D. in Anthropology in 2020 and is currently a college fellow in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, and her former doctoral associate Zarin Machanda, an assistant professor of Anthropology and Biology at Tufts University.
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