Infant chimps play with stick dolls – The Guardian
The behaviour provides evidence that differences between boys’ and girls’ play may be biologically influenced
Young chimps play make-believe games in which they pretend that a favourite stick is a baby for nurturing and even putting to bed, according to a 14-year study of the animals in Uganda.
Infant male and female chimpanzees play in distinctive ways. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA
Biologists watched the chimps in the forests of Kibale National Park in Uganda and found intriguing differences in the way young males and females passed their time – providing evidence that differences in the way boys and girls play may have a genetically hardwired element.
While both sexes collected sticks to use as toys, females often treated them like dolls, carrying their sticks from tree to tree, patting and cuddling them, and involving them in simple games. In one case, a young male chimp made a small nest next to his own and appeared to put his stick to bed.
The few males in the group that played with stick dolls gave up when they reached adulthood. But females carried on the parental role-playing game and only stopped when they gave birth to their first baby. Two thirds of the chimps who kept stick dolls were female.
The findings suggest that biological factors – rather than social influences alone – play some role in shaping toy preferences in childhood.
“There are predispositions, biological influences, that lead females and males to treat sticks differently,” Richard Wrangham, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University, told the Guardian. “What we’ve got here is evidence that without any kind of socialisation by adults, females seem to be predisposed to react to sticks as though they were dolls.” This could reflect more female interest in infant care and playing at mothering.
The use of stick dolls appears to be a first for wild chimpanzees and may be a social tradition that has sprung up as a one-off in the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Kibale, Wrangham said.
The claim that boys and girls are biologically prone to favour one kind of toy over another is controversial. Other explanations point to peer behaviour and sexual stereotyping by parents as more important influences.
“People tend to focus on the socialisation aspects of why boys play with guns and girls play with dolls, but our study suggests there is a biological component at work,” Wrangham said. The research, co-authored by “Sonya Kahlenberg at Bates College in Maine, appears in the journal Current Biology.
The study is not the first to suggest a biological origin for toy preferences in young primates. In 2008, Janice Hassett’s group at Yerkes National Primate Research Centre at Emory University in Atlanta gave rhesus monkeys a collection of toys to play with. The males spent most of their time playing with trucks and other “masculine” toys, while females played with a greater variety of toys.
via Infant chimps play with ‘stick dolls’ | Science | The Guardian.
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