If you are a male human, nothing puts a damper on romantic success like having your mother in tow. If you are a male northern muriqui monkey, however, mom’s presence may be your best bet to find and successfully mate with just the right girl at the right time.
In a study of wild primates, reported this week (Nov. 7, 2011) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist Karen B. Strier describes a monkey society where equality and tolerance rule and where sexually mature males, still living at home, seem to get helpful access to mates by the mere presence of their mothers and other maternal kin.
New research in the UK on rhesus macaque monkeys has found for the first time that if they live in larger groups they develop more gray matter in parts of the brain involved in processing information on social interactions.
