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No Grumpy Old Men in the Chimp World - The New York Times

No Grumpy Old Men in the Chimp World - The New York Times

No Grumpy Old Men in the Chimp World - The New York Times
Oct 22, 2020 1 min, 24 secs

Older male chimps follow a pattern that researchers also see in humans, preferring to have positive relationships with a few good friends.

It’s good to have friends, for humans and chimpanzees.

In young adulthood, humans tend to have a lot of friendships.

But as they age, social circles narrow, and people tend to keep a few good friends around and enjoy them more.

Machanda said, is that as we get older we think, “I don’t have time for these negative people in my life, or I don’t want to waste my time with all of this negativity.” So we concentrate on a few good friends and invest in them.

Along with several colleagues, they reported Thursday in the journal Science that male chimps, at least, display the very same inclinations as humans.

The team looked only at interactions of male chimpanzees because males are quite gregarious and form a lot of friendships, whereas females are more tied to family groups.

They used the proximity of chimpanzees to one another to determine friendships — friends sit together.

As they got older, the chimps developed more mutual friendships and fewer one-sided friendships.

Or, the authors of the paper suggest, it could be that by maintaining an active and positive social life, the older male chimps maximize their chances to mate and reproduce, even at an advanced age.

Older chimps do reproduce, but the authors don’t know whether an active social life, even among males, keeps them in the mix, so to speak, and increases their chances to father more offspring.

And that’s related to another subject for future research: How friendships among female chimpanzees change as they grow older

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