2023-07-05 08:29:16
Updated Wednesday, July 5, 2023 – 08:29
This behavior is called “peering” and is based on observing for five seconds and from less than two meters to a role model
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A study has shown that migrating male orangutans learn about the unfamiliar foods of their new place of residence spying on the inhabitants of that area.
“Our results suggest that migrating males not only learn from locals where to find food and what to eatbut they also continue learning to process these new foods,” explained Julia MrchenPhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Leipzig (Germany) and lead author of the study.
Mrchen, together with other international researchers, has shown that migrating males learn this information through a behavior called “peering”consisting of observe intensely for at least five seconds and from less than two meters at a role model. Orangutans closely observing the model typically showed signs of following its actions with head movements, indicating attentive interest.
Orangutans depend on their mothers for longer than any other non-human animalThey nurse them until they are at least six years old and live with them for up to three more years, learning to find, choose, and process the vast array of foods they eat. After this process, they are the males what move to other areas to become independentwhile females tend to settle near their natal area.
“Which We still don’t know how far the orangutan males disperse, nor to where. But it is possible to make educated guesses: genetic data and observations of orangutans crossing physical barriers such as rivers and mountains suggest long-distance dispersal, probably tens of kilometers,” says Mrchen.
Furthermore, as a result, he adds that the demonstrated ability “is probably ancestral in our hominid lineagegoing back at least 12 to 14 million years to the last common ancestor we share with orangutans.”
30 years of research
The authors analyzed 30 years old of observations, collected by 157 trained observers, of 77 migrant adult males of the very sociable orangutan of Sumatra I put abelii at the Suaq Balimbing research station in southwestern Aceh and 75 migrant adult males of the less sociable orangutan of Borneo I put pygmaeus wurmbii in Tuanan station, Central Kalimantan.
They focused on each observation of this behavior during 4,009 occasions in which these males were at less than 50 meters from one or more neighborswhich could be adult females, young or adult males.
They were observed 534 male gazes in 207 (5.2%) of these associations. At Suaq Balimbing, males looked more frequently at local females, followed by local juveniles, and less often at adult males.
In the less sociable population of Tuanan, the opposite was true: males looked more frequently at adult males, followed by immature orangutans, and less often at adult females. Migrant Tuanan males may lack opportunities to watch local females, as they are known to females avoid prolonged association with them in this population.
Migratory males then interacted more frequently with the food they had their eye onputting into practice what they had learned.
“Our detailed analyzes further showed that the migrating male orangutans in our study peeked more frequently at difficult-to-process foods or that the local population only rarely eats, including foods that were only eaten for a couple of minutes throughout the entire study,” says Dr. Anja WiddigProfessor at the University of Leipzig.
“Interestingly, observation rates of migrating males decreased after a few months in the new zone, which implies that this is how long it takes them to learn about new foods“adds Dr. Caroline Schuppli, group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Konstanz.
The authors caution that it is not yet known how many times adult orangutans need to observe a particular behavior to learn to master it. Observations suggest that, depending on the complexity or novelty of the learned skill, adults may continue to use exploratory behaviors on certain foods first introduced to them through peekingpossibly to find out more details, reinforce and memorize the new information or compare the latter with previous knowledge.
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