What is it about?
The internet is obsessed with boops. But why do animals touch noses, also known as muzzle-muzzle contact? Here, we look at the role of muzzle contact in wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus). Most initiators of muzzle contact ate after contacting someone who was also eating, suggesting that vervets are gaining information about food during muzzle contact. We also found that the clearest indicated that predicted whether a muzzle contact would happen was social tolerance between those involved, meaning that animals only contacted others they knew would put up with their intrusion.
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Why is it important?
Muzzle contact appears to be a common behavior in social animals, but there not many have tested why animals like to touch noses. Here, we tried to fill this gap for vervet monkeys, first by determining what muzzle contact looks like (who initiates and who receives). Next, we tested whether vervets are using muzzle contact for the most common reason given in the literature--to figure out what others are eating. While we find some evidence that vervets can use muzzle contact to gain information about food, our findings do not show that this is overwhelmingly so. Instead, our results show that vervets contact others that will tolerate them, rather than animals who likely have food information. However, if vervets gain information about food by contacting another who is eating, as well as eating something rare, they do appear to immediately use this information by eating themselves after contact.
Perspectives
This is my first, first author paper, and it's exciting that it's about the kind of behaviors I love--common behaviors happening right under our noses (no pun intended) that we know very little about. I'm very interested in the means by which animals can learn from one another, and muzzle contact was a likely candidate. Vervet muzzle contact has been mentioned a couple of times in the literature, but no one has tested its possible function. As with most findings, it's a bit complicated--vervets can use muzzle contact to get information, but only from someone who will tolerate them. This likely constrains information that can pass via muzzle contact.
Christina Nord
University of Lethbridge
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Tolerance of muzzle contact underpins the acquisition of foraging information in vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus)., Journal of Comparative Psychology, August 2021, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/com0000258.
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