Elsevier

Cognition

Volume 37, Issues 1–2, November 1990, Pages 167-196
Cognition

The representation of social relations by monkeys

https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(90)90022-CGet rights and content

Abstract

Monkeys recognize the social relations that exist among others in their group. They know who associates with whom, for example, and other animals' relative dominance ranks. In addition, monkeys appear to compare types of social relations and make same/different judgements about them. In captivity, longtailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) trained to recognize the relation between one adult female and her offspring can identify the same relation among other mother-offspring pairs, and distinguish this relation from bonds between individuals who are related in a different way. In the wild, if a vervet monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops) has seen a fight between a member of its own family and a member of Family X, this increases the likelihood that it will act aggressively toward another member of Family X. Vervets act as if they recognize some similarity between their own close associates and the close associates of others. To make such comparisons the monkeys must have some way of representing the properties of social relationships. We discuss the adaptive value of such representations, the information they contain, their structure, and their limitations.

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    Research supported by NSF Grant BNS 85-21147 and NIH Grant 19826. We thank Susan Abrams, Jeffrey Cynx, Verena Dasser, Daniel Dennett, Lynn Fairbanks, Randy Gallistel, Lila Gleitman, Sandy Harcourt, Robert Hinde, Peter Marler, Barbara Smuts, Kelly Stewart and three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts.

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