Functional Differences Of Grooming Over The Body Parts In Wild Tibetan Macaques Macaca Thibetana

Most primates live in groups,and members of groups also exhibit complex and varied social interactions to maintain social bonds among individuals and stability of the group.Grooming,refers to the process of grooming and cleaning the body surface of an individual or another individual.Grooming is the most prominent social models,and plays a very important role in the daily social interaction between members of a group.A large number of studies have shown that the distributions of grooming sites were not only restricted by factors such as hair density,parasite density,and accessibility of hand,but also influenced by various social attributes such as gender,order,age,and relationships.However,due to the current research about grooming mostly focused on the frequency and duration,researches on grooming location are not yet fully,make us unable to understand how the social attribute influence social grooming site choice,and grooming in different parts of the body has different social function? What are the functional differences? Furthermore,we cannot deeply explore the adaptive strategies of individuals in response to different partners and different environments.This research from July 2019 to January 2020 and April 2020 to July,the target animal sampling method is adopted and behavior of the continuous sampling method,the Huangshan scenic area south of wild Tibetan macaques(Macaca thibetana)YA1 grooming acquisition occurs in the group,and by means of self-grooming and social-grooming on parts of the body distribution rule under different environment and social grooming between individual preference difference analysis of parts of the body.The aim of this study was to reveal the functional differences of grooming behaviors in different body parts of macaques and to explore the adaptive strategies of individuals in different social environments.The main results of this study are as follows:(1)There were significant differences in the distribution of self-grooming and socialgrooming over the body parts in Tibetan macaques.Self-grooming was mainly distributed to the forearms,thighs and legs,which were easily accessible to the hands,while socialgrooming was more distributed to the back,arms and flanks,which were difficult to reach by the hands of the groomee.(2)Individuals have significant differences in their choice of sites when dealing with partners with different sex attributes.Compared with male partners,female partners gave more grooming on the arms,forearms,thighs,legs,chest-belly,flanks and rump-tail,while male partners gave less chest-belly and face.At the same time,females received more on the back area,and less on the arms,forearms,thighs,legs,face and head,while males received more social grooming to the flanks from females.(3)After the occurrence of social bridging,individuals paid more attention to the combing of the neck and the arms during social grooming,while the proportion of grooming time on the back decreased significantly.After mating,however,the proportion of the opposite sex grooming on the back increased significantly.Moreover,there were some differences between the sexes in post-mating position preference: the proportion of back increased significantly between female-male dyads,while no significant change in male-female dyads.These results suggest that Tibetan macaques social grooming in different parts of the body have different social functions.Like the neck,face and other parts have higher social interaction,enhance the function of the social relationship between individuals.The back has higher detente between individuals in areas such as the emotion,reduce the risk of their own attack of social function,at the same time,the individual will also be in response to different properties of partners show different grooming strategies to obtain corresponding social demands.This study not only reveals the differences of grooming functions in different parts of the body,but also provides a scientific basis for further understanding of individual adaptive strategies in different environments.It also helps to promote the understanding of the origin and development process of the human economy and society.