Chimpanzee mothers prioritise playtime with their offspring, even when food is scarce
Helen Pilcher
New research into the behaviour of chimpanzee mothers, published in Current Biology, shows that they prioritise tickling, chasing and playing with their youngsters, in order to help give them the best start in life. Play is not very common in the wild, at least among adult animals. It might be fun but it uses up a lot of energy, so the practice tends to be restricted to youngsters, where it plays a key role in developing physical and social skills. Adult chimps are unusual because they play with each other and with their young, but researchers expected to see that when food supplies dwindle, the adults would ditch play in favour of foraging.
Drawing on 10 years of observational data on wild chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park, researchers from Tufts University in Boston found that while many adults do adopt this strategy, mother chimps tend not to. On the contrary, when supplies of quality fruits are low, mother chimps continue to nurture the development of their offspring through play, even though the experience is energetically costly to them.
The social structure of chimps may help to explain this. Chimps live in troops of around 25 to 80. When food is scarce, chimp mothers tend to peel
