11/29/2023 0 Comments Old chimpanzeeThe study tested the origins of humans prioritizing close, positive relationships during aging and whether that is really triggered by a theory known as socioemotional selectivity. The project started as Hagberg’s undergraduate senior thesis. Muller, a former postdoctoral fellow in HEB. Machanda and Thompson worked in Wrangham’s lab as graduate students and currently serve as co-directors for the Kibale project, which has other authors on the paper including Martin N. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and founder and co-director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project. ’05, who’s now an associate professor at the University of New Mexico Lindsey Hagberg ’17, who’s now a medical student at Washington University and Richard W. ’09, who’s now an assistant professor at Tufts University Melissa Emery Thompson, A.M. Other Harvard-connected authors on the paper include Zarin Machanda, A.M. Rosati is a former assistant professor and visiting fellow in HEB department, where the study originated. “More humans are living longer than in the past, which can change the dynamics of aging.” “There’s really a pressing need to understand the biology of aging,” Rosati said. “The really cool thing is that we found that chimpanzees are showing these patterns that mirror those of humans,” said Alexandra Rosati ’05, an assistant professor of psychology and anthropology at the University of Michigan and one of the paper’s lead authors.įuture research can help determine if these behaviors constitute the normal or successful course that aging should take, she added. The preference is known as a positivity bias. And like older humans looking for some peace and quiet, the chimpanzees showed a shift from negative to more positive interactions as they reached their twilight years. Older males were also more likely to spend more time alone and showed a preference for interacting with - and grooming - chimps they deemed to be more important social partners, like other aging chimps or their mutual friends. Mutual friendships are characterized by behavior such as reciprocated grooming whereas in lopsided friendships grooming isn’t always returned. The older chimpanzees they studied, for instance, had on average more mutual friendships while younger chimps had more one-sided relationships. Analyzing a trove of data, the researchers saw that the chimpanzees displayed much of the same behavior aging humans exhibit. The researchers looked only at male chimpanzees because they show stronger social bonds and have more frequent social interactions than female chimps. It shows what’s believed to be the first evidence of nonhuman animals deliberately selecting who they socialize with during aging. It looked at the social interactions of 21 male chimpanzees between 15 and 58 years old in the Kibale National Park in Uganda. The study draws on 78,000 hours of observations, made between 19. 23 issue of the journal Science and is authored by a team of psychologists and primatologists, including current and former researchers from the Harvard Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. Understanding why can help scientists gain a better picture of what healthy aging should look like and what triggers this social change. These behaviors were thought to be unique to humans but it turns out chimpanzees, one of our closest living relatives, have these traits, too. When humans age, they tend to favor small circles of meaningful, established friendships rather than seek new ones, and to lean toward positive relationships rather than ones that bring tension or conflict.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |