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Abstract
Understanding the affective lives of animals has been a long-standing
challenge in science. Recent technological progress in infrared thermal
imaging has enabled researchers to monitor animals' physiological states
in real-time when exposed to ecologically relevant situations, such as
feeding in the company of others. During social feeding, an individual's
physiological states are likely to vary with the nature of the resource
and perceptions of competition. Previous findings in chimpanzees have
indicated that events perceived as competitive cause decreases in nasal
temperatures, whereas the opposite was observed for cooperative
interactions. Here, we tested how food resources and audience structure
impacted on how social feeding events were perceived by wild
chimpanzees. Overall, we found that nasal temperatures were lower when
meat was consumed as compared to figs, consistent with the idea that
social feeding on more contested resources is perceived as more
dangerous and stressful. Nasal temperatures were significant affected by
interactions between food type and audience composition, in particular
the number of males, their dominance status, and their social bond
status relative to the subject, while no effects for the presence of
females were observed. Our findings suggest that male chimpanzees
closely monitor and assess their social environment during competitive
situations, and that infrared imaging provides an important complement
to access psychological processes beyond observable social behaviours.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 20210302 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
Volume | 377 |
Issue number | 1860 |
Early online date | 8 Aug 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 26 Sept 2022 |
Keywords
- Audience effects
- Social ecology
- Skin temperature
- Social cognition
- Pan troglodytes
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Dive into the research topics of 'Thermal imaging reveals social monitoring during social feeding in wild chimpanzees'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Cat Hobaiter: H2020 ERC Starting Grant 2018 GESTURALORIGINS
Hobaiter, C. (PI)
1/03/19 → 28/02/24
Project: Fellowship
Datasets
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Thermal imaging reveals social monitoring during social feeding in wild chimpanzees (dataset)
Soldati, A. (Creator) & Hobaiter, C. (Creator), OSF, 2022
Dataset