Supply & Demand:

Social Grooming in Chimpanzees

Part I: Introduction

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are one of the five species of great apes.  They are distributed across a wide area in Africa, and they live in fission-fusion societies.  Females spend most of their time alone but will occasionally return to a subgroup, especially when they are in estrus. On the other hand, males are quite social and have a pronounced social hierarchy that is established by age, agonistic interactions, aggressiveness, and intelligence.

Chimpanzees are covered with black hair on most of their body.  Like other primate species, chimpanzees exhibit grooming behavior.  They can groom themselves (autogrooming), or they can groom others (allogrooming).  Individuals can spend hours carefully combing through each other’s fur in search of dead skin, matted hair, and leaf debris.  In fact, some individuals may groom for up spend up to 25 % of their waking hours!

 

Generate some hypotheses to explain why chimpanzees groom.

 

 

Go to Part II: Allogrooming vs. Autogrooming

This webpage was completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

Biology 323, Animal Behavior, at Davidson College in the Spring Semester 2009.

For questions or comments, please e-mail chsteelman@davidson.edu.