Social animals often develop relationships with other group members to reduce aggression and gain access to scarce resources. In wild chacma baboons the strategy for grooming activities shows a certain pattern across the day.
Grooming between individuals in a group of baboons is not practiced without ulterior motives.
To be groomed has hygienic benefits and is stress relieving for the individual, while grooming another individual can provide access to infants, mating opportunities and high quality food by means of tolerance at a patch.
The study from Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen and Zoological Society of London shows that such social strategies in chacma baboons vary across the day in a manner where subordinate individuals will gain most from their grooming activities.
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"We investigated whether diurnal changes in the value of one commodity, tolerance at shared food patches, lead to diurnal patterns of affiliative interaction, namely grooming," said biologist Claudia Sick.
"As predicted, we found that, in wild chacma baboons, subordinates were more likely to groom the more dominant individuals earlier in the day, when most foraging activities still lay ahead and the need for tolerance at shared feeding sites was greatest," Sick said.
It is commonly known that strong social bonds over several years can make an important contribution to the fitness of individuals in animal groups.
Therefore one could expect individuals to invest primarily in such long-term relationships.
However, studies have shown that relationships also vary over months and weeks in accordance with a biological market.
This study's findings indicate that social strategies may be even more flexible and optimised over even shorter periods than previously appreciated.