AI reveals mechanism for kin selection in a wild primate

Thursday, May 28, 2020 - 08:10 in Psychology & Sociology

More like mom or dad? Human babies always get this curious look in their faces combined with the question of whom the child resembles most. The answers vary depending on the degree of kinship, gender and the time of assessment. Mandrills, monkeys living in Equatorial Africa, may recognize facial features coding relatedness better than humans. Scientists showed by using up-to-date artificial intelligence (AI) that half-sisters, who have the same father look more alike than half-sisters who share the same mother. The paternal half-sisters also have closer social relationships with each other than unrelated mandrills. This result provided the first evidence suggesting that interindividual resemblance has been selected to signal paternal kinship.

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