Within the context of affiliative interactions among primates, social play is one of the most commonly observed behaviors. Specifically, social play allows younger individuals such as infants and juveniles to learn social roles and help in furthering their social development. Here, we examine social play and behavioral sequences among a wild eastern chimpanzee community (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) within the Mahale Mountains with the aim to better understand the correlation between play behavior and party composition (i.e. number and age/sex of individuals), directional patterns of initiators and recipients, and clustering (or hierarchy) of behavioral sequences. In the summer of 1996, professor emerita, Linda Marchant collected 1775 minutes of social behavior and tool use across 43 named individuals, including 28 adults, 2 subadults, and 5 juveniles. We are currently reviewing the footage coding for social interactions between individuals engaged in play behavior, including age and sex of the actor(s) and recipient(s), direction of behavior, and sequence of events using a detailed ethogram and the Behavioral Observation Research Interactive Software (BORIS). Currently, we have coded 114 behaviors observed over two play bouts lasting three minutes and 58 seconds, with the majority of participants being juvenile males. We will code the remaining videos over the next year, building a robust dataset for statistical and social network analysis. Additionally, we plan to compare the observed play behaviors of Mahale chimpanzees to that of other sites, such as Gombe, Kanyawara, and Ngogo. Future results will be presented at next year’s Undergraduate Research Forum and the Annual Conference of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists. By creating a comparative analysis of play behavior across multiple sites, we aim to further emphasize the importance of conservation of these species, not just to preserve the populations but the variation of cultural adaptations within them.
Authors: Elisabeth Frank, Mary Lerch, Linda Marchant, Kelsey Ellis
Mentor(s): Kelsey Ellis, Department of Anthropology
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