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For any child the arrival of a new sibling is a stressful period of lost parental attention having to care for the youngest.
But some researchers have discovered that it is not just little people who want a lot of time to adjust to the arrival of their younger brother or sister.
Academics studied bonobo monkeys in Salonga National Park, an isolated tropical forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in central Africa.
Bonobo (otherwise known as Pan paniscus) is an endangered species which together with chimpanzees make up the ‘Pan’ genus of these monkeys.
The species is known for the frequent habits of the couple, which they use in the form of greetings, or to make friends to solve problems.
Bonobots and chimpanzees have many similarities in appearance and both of them have about 98 percent of the same DNA as human, which makes the animal closest to us.
The new study was led by Verena Behringer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
“In low-ontogenic mammals, the birth of a sibling is an important period of developmental transition,” said Behringer and colleagues in the study.
“Behavioral studies show that this event is a stress carrier for the eldest offspring for whom there is not much physiological evidence.”
“Our results show that the transition to a non-single offspring brings stress not only in terms of nutrition and social status, so it is suggested that this is something evolutionarily old.”
The group studied the young of 20 female bonobo monkeys and six males, aged two to eight, in the Congolese Salonga National Park.
Salonga, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest tropical forest in Africa. It can only be reached by water.
In addition to bonobos, it is home to a number of other endangered species such as the chimpanzee, the Congo peacock, the forest elephant, and the narrow-mouthed African crocodile.
To study this transition between bonobo juveniles, the researchers took into account the physiological and behavioral changes in them.
These changes included increased levels of cortisol, which is the main indicator of stress, as well as neoprene, an indicator of immunity, which are found in urine and signal the presence in the blood.
While the behavioral changes included those in the mother-child relationship and food indicators (breastfeeding, standing on their backs, bodily contacts, and independent food search.
With the birth of a new baby in the family, neoprene levels dropped and cortisol levels increased fivefold in the largest offspring.
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