Nature and nurture may both influence gender-based toy choices.
© Michael Poliza, National Geographic/Getty ImagesA young chimp in Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania (file picture).
It's almost Christmas, and,
as the song goes, Barney and Ben hope for Hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots, while Janice and Jen would like dolls that will talk and go for a walk.
Now new research suggests that such gender-driven desires are also seen in young female chimpanzees in the wild - a behavior that possibly evolved to make the animals better mothers, experts say.Young females of the Kanyawara chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park,
Uganda, use sticks as rudimentary dolls and care for them like the group's mother chimps tend to their real offspring. The behavior, which was
very rarely observed in males, has been witnessed more than a hundred times over 14 years of study.
"The stick serves no immediate function, they just carry it - sometimes for a few minutes, other times for hours," study leader
Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard University, said via email.
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