"I meet people who don't know much about chimps, but who say to me, 'Oh, yes, I read that half of infant chimps are not fathered in the group,' " said Dr. Anne E. Pusey, a behavior ecologist at the University of Minnesota.
The Humane Society also has evidence, provided to ScienceInsider, that the U.S. National Institutes of Health violated its own moratorium on breeding chimpanzees for biomedical research, awarding New Iberia a contract to provide infant chimps to government investigators.
The infant chimps and the older females come to inspect him.
Tells about the various studies with chimpanzees--mother-infant relationships, chimp social groups, & home-raising baby chimps.
Poor Mother Chimps: Even after first molars emerge, baby chimps continue to suckle, reports ScienceNews.org.org
Mature dogs look like wolf pups, and humans look more like chimp infants than chimp adults, researchers noted at the meeting.
In two new studies, published online today in Current Biology, researchers cite this and a case of chimp mothers carrying around their dead infants to support the idea that our closest evolutionary cousins share many humanlike responses to death, including mourning.
The reason may be that other higher-ranking males are likely to be around, too, and by advertising her availability to them a female chimp may gain many influential protectors for her future infant.
Male chimps and baboons are prone to kill any infant they believe could not be theirs, so females try to blur paternity by mating with as many individuals as possible before each conception.
