Primates' Exploratory Nature Exposes Them to Parasites

The exploratory nature of primates has always been seen as a good thing, leading to advances in civilization, but new research shows that it may come at a cost. For non-human primates like chimpanzees, it could expose them to harmful parasites.

For these monkeys, learning from others and innovation is a part of their culture. Past studies have shown that they use tools like stones and sticks in times of hardship, cleverly use the cover of darkness to raid nearby crops for food, and learn from one another certain "cultural" behavior. Even when it comes to fashion trends, chimpanzees are eager to look to one another for guidance.

However civilized and beneficial this behavior may be, it also subjects these primates to a wider variety of socially transmitted parasites. Whereas innovative, exploratory species suffer from more parasites transmitted through the environment, such as in the soil or water, than from thier fellow animals.

"We tend to focus on innovation and learning from others as a good thing, but their costs have received relatively little attention," McGill University biologist Simon Reader, co-author of the study, said in a statement.

"Here, we uncover evidence that socially transmitted pathogen burdens rise with learning from others - perhaps because close interaction is needed for such learning - and environmentally transmitted pathogen burdens rise with exploratory behavior such as innovation and extractive foraging," he explained.

Previous studies haven't been able to determine which came first, the chicken or the egg. That is, whether costly parasites force primates to engage in more exploratory behavior - by diversifying food sources, for example - or whether exploratory behavior leads to their having more parasites.

"Our results support the idea that exploratory and social behaviors expose primates to specific kinds of parasites," Reader added.

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, also begs the question of how humans and other primates learned to deal with transmitted parasites, such as eating medicinal plants. This study may help scientists learn more about how the more sophisticated human culture came to be.

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