image: These are dwarf mongooses. view more
Credit: Shannon Wild (photographer)
A study suggests that dwarf mongooses recall recent cooperation by group members to reciprocate in kind. Social animals exchange services, such as grooming, in return for others, such as enabling access to food and mates and warding off rival groups. However, whether nonhuman animals reciprocate based on a memory of recent cooperation remains unclear. Julie Kern and Andrew Radford examined a wild population of dwarf mongooses (Helogale parvula) in South Africa and found that the extent to which individuals served as sentinels--guards who watch for predators and warn the group using alarm calls--was directly linked with the number of grooming partners they boasted and the number of grooming bouts they received. Increased grooming, which improves hygiene and reduces anxiety, offsets the heightened predation risk and reduced foraging time tied to performing sentinel duty. When the authors simulated an increase in the sentinel contributions of selected mongooses by playing back recordings of their surveillance calls, which are used to announce the sentinels' presence, those mongooses received increased grooming later in the day at their sleeping refuge, compared with mongooses whose sentinel contributions had not been manipulated. By contrast, playing back foraging calls, rather than surveillance calls, of the same mongooses did not result in increased grooming later in the day. According to the authors, the findings suggest that nonhuman animals are capable of recalling recent cooperation to reciprocate in kind.
Article #18-01000: "Experimental evidence for delayed contingent cooperation among wild dwarf mongooses," by Julie Kern and Andrew Radford.
MEDIA CONTACT: Andy Radford, University of Bristol, UNITED KINGDOM; tel: +44-07812188010; e-mail: <andy.radford@bristol.ac.uk>
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