After studying the social relationships between baboons, scientists have determined that social bonds actually keep them alive longer.
The researchers focused on grooming interactions, a sign of nurturing, using data set on wild baboons.
"There was one big challenge to conducting a study like ours, keeping the long-term field study going over several decades to collect the data we needed," said Elizabeth Archie, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Baboons in the wild can live for over 2 years, so we needed many years of data to accurately measure the baboons' life spans."
They found that male and female baboons live longer when socially connected to other baboons than those who don't have many companions. This proved that relationships had much to do with survival and variation in lifespan.
"I think the results are applicable to humans," said Archie. "Specifically, there have been a handful of studies that have shown that an animal's social connections can predict their longevity, including research on rats, dolphins and baboons."
The study involved more than 200 wild female baboons from the plains of southern Kenya. The baboons measured themselves based on how often they engaged in social grooming compared to their peers. Those who engage in more social grooming live two to three years longer than their isolated counterparts, according to the study.
Fraternizing with males helped females live even longer than socializing with other females, the researchers said.
Females' interactions with other females grew less frequent with age, though their interactions with males stayed the same, according to the study.
"Our results help confirm this phenomenon in mammals and suggest it might be widely shared across several social species. In addition, we see very strong evidence that social relationships predict human lifespan. Across a range of circumstances, people who receive more social support tend to live longer than people who are socially isolated. Our results suggest that this phenomenon might be part of our shared biological history with other mammals," he added.
So if social connection is so important, why are some baboons less sociable then others?
"If social relationships are a valuable commodity, competition for them should be intense, which could result in social exclusion for some animals," said biologist Lauren Brent, a specialist in animal friendships who wasn't involved with the research, according to the news release.
Researchers now want to find out if male-female relationships lengthen lifespan in males as well.
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