Creating connection: greeting and leave-taking behavior in nonhuman primates

Abstract

Nonhuman primates create and maintain strong, positive social relationships with others. I examine the behaviors primates show when greeting their kin and allies, and how such greetings mirror embracing and kissing seen when humans are reunited or resolve conflict in order to maintain affiliative relationships. While physical contact during greeting creates opportunities for disease transmission and injury, it also helps to build and maintain social bonds and supports individuals when they reconcile and reunite. I also consider whether, like humans, primates also show leave-taking behaviors and if these are mediated by their relationship or the known duration of a loved one's upcoming absence. While there is clear evidence that primates do greet each other with physical touch and vocalizations, less is known about their leave-taking behavior. There has been a lack of study effort investigating leave-taking as compared to greeting behavior, and because proposed leave-taking interactions are more subtle than greetings further limits our ability to identify and track potential leave taking in nonhuman primates. I close with considerations of primates' responses to death – the most permanent departure. Disease and death disrupt social interactions both directly and indirectly and while human cultures have clear social rituals in response to death, there is a growing body of work demonstrating that primates also respond to the death of groupmates in distinct ways and that there are differential responses to the deaths of adult group members to those of infants.