Mother Chimps Crucial for Children's Social Skills: Orphans Less Socially Competent

Mothers play a huge role in how social their children are--at least when it comes to chimps. Scientists have discovered that orphaned chimpanzees are less socially competent than their peers who were raised by their mothers. The findings reveal a little bit more about how these creatures adapt socially and may reveal new insight into human adaptation.

In order to study how much influence a mother chimp has over her child, the researchers compared the play behavior of 8 orphaned and 9 mother-reared juvenile chimpanzees at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia. The orphaned group contained chimps that were between four and nine years old and were in a situation where they were essentially raising each other. Both the orphaned and the mother-reared chimps matched each other in age and sex.

The scientists expected the orphaned juveniles to play less frequently and smoothly than mother-reared chimpanzees. Yet what they found was the opposite. The orphaned chimps played more frequently than their mother-reared counterparts. That said, their social play resulted more often in aggression rather than the social play of young chimps reared with their mothers.

"Orphaned chimpanzees had more difficulties to successfully coordinate their social play interactions," said Edwin van Leeuwen, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Since social play comprises a complex context in which signals about intentions need to be communicated, it seems that orphaned chimpanzees have missed out on valuable lessons from their mothers."

Just like in humans, it seemed as if the chimps benefitted from having mothers in their lives. Social skills are learned primarily from parents, which means that the chimps missed out greatly when their mothers weren't present.

"Mothers seem to prepare their offspring for challenges that are very important for successful group living," said Van Leeuwen in a news release. "For orphans, however, the presence of other adult role models may alternatively be beneficial for boosting social competence, which is an important consideration to entertain for sanctuaries dealing with integrations of chimpanzees."

The findings could have important implications for rehabilitating orphaned chimpanzees before releasing them into the wild. By giving them an adult role model, keepers could give chimps a way to better learn to socialize, which means they may be more readily accepted into social groups in the wild.

The findings are published in the journal Animal Cognition.