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Women rule planet of the apes

Monkeys pay more attention to females than to males, according to research.

Scientists studying wild vervet monkeys in South Africa found that the animals were better able to learn a task when it was demonstrated by a female.

The team compared animals’ responses to demonstrations of a simple box-opening task, which was demonstrated either by a dominant male or female monkey.

Their findings are described in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Biologist Erica van de Waal, from the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland, and her team, studied six neighbouring groups of wild vervet monkeys in South Africa’s Loskop Dam Nature Reserve.

They gave the monkeys boxes containing fruit, which had doors on each differently coloured end.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .