Jennifer Viegas

Polygamous male primates aren’t exactly famous for their fathering skills, but a new study has found that baboon dads matter, to the point where their presence and care can physically change their sons and daughters for the better

WASHINGTON, U.S.; February 19, 2008.- When dad’s around, yellow baboon offspring begin their reproductive lives earlier, allowing them to reward their father with more grandchildren in future.

The discovery suggests that paternal presence could be important for all primates, and perhaps for all polygamous mammal societies.

Dad especially comes in handy when fending off bullies, co-author Susan Alberts told Discovery News.

“If a baboon kid is in danger, it may scream or make eye contact with its father,” she said. “It’s very obvious, even to human onlookers, what is meant. It’s as though the young baboon is saying, ‘Help me! Help me! This individual is attacking me.’”

“It’s not unlike human parents who hear their kids screaming,” added Alberts, an associate professor of biology at Duke University.

Good fathers can also indirectly fatten up their offspring by overseeing wider patches of territory for foraging, determined Alberts and her colleagues. To arrive at that conclusion, the researchers analyzed 30 years worth of data they had collected on 40 males and 78 females from wild yellow baboon groups living in the Amboseli basin at the foot of Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro.

The researchers specifically focused on the age of physical maturation, a good measure of fitness in most primates. Humans are somewhat different, because kids with very attentive parents usually mature more slowly than others.

Among baboons, daughters with supportive fathers reached menarche, the onset of menstruation, earlier. Sons with such fathers also experienced testicular enlargement earlier, but only if their father was a highly ranked individual in the baboon’s tight knit group.

“For young females, because their major opponents in life are adult females and fellow juveniles, the presence of any male may be helpful,” Alberts explained. “But for maturing sons, it may be that it’s not really the females they’re dealing with; it’s the adult males they have to worry about. In that case, only the presence of a high-ranking dad would be helpful.”

The findings are published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research team also looked at other factors, aside from fatherly care, which might contribute to earlier maturation. These included the mother’s social rank, the presence of the mother and aunts, the number of offspring, rainfall in the year prior to the individual’s maturity, and genetic factors.

Together, these added variables explained some of the difference in the age of maturation, with a mother’s presence having the greatest overall impact, even over the father’s contribution.

“If a kid loses its mother, it won’t survive,” Alberts explained. “So much is directly dependent upon her support, but we now know baboon fathers make an important contribution too.”

Toni Ziegler, an endocrinologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s National Primate Research Center, echoed Alberts’ comments.

“We’re interested in what motivates dads to be good parents because there are so many men who just aren’t good fathers,” Ziegler said.

Ziegler has found that marmoset and tamarind monkey males are heavily involved in infant care. Marmoset fathers, for example, remain monogamous for life and can often be seen toting, cleaning and playing with their young. They even pack on extra pounds when a female mate becomes pregnant, probably so that they can better withstand the rigors of parenting once their offspring are born.

Human dads, in general, also stand out among other mammals.

“Human males get a bad rap, but men are fabulous fathers in comparison to 90 percent of the rest of the mammalian world,” Alberts said. “The new findings prove that paternal care goes back very deep into our lineage.”

(Discovery News)

 

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