Aaron Sandel

In mammals, father-offspring bonds occur primarily in monogamous species, where paternity is relatively certain and fathers provide care for their offspring. Nevertheless, some primates that mate promiscuously display father-offspring relationships. Behavioral mechanisms, such as familiarity mediated by the mother and dominance rank of the father, may explain such relationships. Recently I have documented novel father-son bonds in a promiscuously-breeding primate: adolescent and young adult male chimpanzees form strong grooming bonds with their fathers at Ngogo in Kibale National Park, Uganda. Father-offspring bonds may be due, in part, to relationships formed when adolescent and young adults were infants and juveniles. I found that males joined subgroups with older males who associated with their mothers in the past. Here, I propose to further investigate father’offspring relationships in chimpanzees. When do such relationships first develop? Do females and males differ in their behavior with paternal kin? Are bonds with fathers a byproduct of preferences for familiar or formerly high-ranking males? Or do chimpanzees possess an undocumented kin recognition mechanism? Finally, what are the benefits of these bonds? My research will force a reevaluation of current models of the evolution of human fatherhood and raise the possibility that ‘fatherhood’ preceded monogamy in human evolution.