Primate Sociality And Culture Essay

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The sociality and culture of primates can be highly influential in their survival rates and in how successful they are as a group. Luckily, a wealth of research has been conducted to better understand the ways in which primate sociality and culture are structured, and how these structures directly correlate with survival. Some areas of study relevant to primate sociality and culture that will be examined include kinship connection, group size, and basic social unit type (BSU). Kinship is a component of primate sociality that plays a rather significant role in how primates operate as a society. A group's kinship connections can directly influence interbirth interval and survival rates. One way that this influence can be examined is in terms of alloparenting, or parental care provided by members of the group other than the parents. Alloparental care allows for the mother to be free of the burden of some aspects of care such as expending the energy to carry their young during lactation; this seemingly small adjustment can allow mothers to have shorter interbirth intervals because they will not have to nurse as long (Strier 2008). Alloparenting typically is done by members of one’s biological kin. For instance, the maternal siblings of an infant often take on some parental duties such as carrying or monitoring; these roles serve as a …show more content…

There are a few different types of BSU's: matrilineal, patrilineal, bilateral, monogamous, polyandrous, and polygynous. In matrilineal groups, only the males migrate between groups and females remain in their original groups; for this reason, matrilineally linked females maintain connections with each other. Within this type of BSU, fissions occur as a way of regulating group size. However, there is no one set group size; numbers of members in a group can vary greatly with as little as ten members or as many as several hundred (Itani

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