Behavioural and physiological indices of social relationships: comparative studies of New World monkeys

Abstract

Prior to embarking on his classic field study of howler monkeys, C.R. Carpenter was impressed with the importance of social interactions in the day-to-day lives of the nonhuman primates (Carpenter, 1934). Largely on the basis of his careful field studies of howler monkeys (Alouatta), spider monkeys (Ateles), macaques (Macaca) and gibbons (Hylobates), it was soon recognized that each primate species forms and maintains a characteristic or modal grouping pattern, defined not only by the numbers and kinds of individuals within a group, but also by ‘the attractive and repellent forces in the matrix of interactions of group members [which] result in the characteristic local spatial dispersions’ (Carpenter, 1952, p. 371). Carpenter considered the central tasks in primatology to be: (1) to describe for each species the characteristic grouping pattern; (2) to discover the extent to which each social system can vary; and (3) to elucidate the processes by which social systems are formed and maintained (Carpenter, 1942).