© 1985 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
Male-Infant Interactions in Baboons and Macaques: A Critique and Reevaluation1
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina 29425 and Yemassee Primate Center Yemassee, South Carolina 29945
A critical reexamination of the empirical data on male-infant interactions among baboons and macaques reveals a number of significant contrasts between them. On an absolute and relative scale, the frequency of occurrence among baboons is rare. When male baboons do interact with infants, only a small proportion of all available male actors do so, and even fewer still (less than one-quarter) account for any substantial percentage of all interactions. In contrast, macaque males are very frequently and commonly involved with infants; all males of the group interact with infants to some degree, and a greater proportion of all the group's males can be characterized as "heavily involved" with infants. The rejection of the role of kinship in interpreting this phenomenon, especially as it occurs among baboons, has rested almost exclusively on the pattern of estimated paternity between male and infant from behavioral (consort) criteria. These behavioralbased data are incomplete at best, possibly incorrect in some instances, and in fact, in many studies kinship appears to be a predominant factor. Until patrilineal data are derived from independent cytogenetic studies, these evolutionary interpretations must be viewed with extreme skepticism.