Lemur popularity tied to mental skill

For many societies, beauty and brawn are preferred attributes and can influence where an individual lands in social circles.

What defines “cool” for humans differs from one generation to the next, but — at least as far as stereotypes and teen movies are concerned — being studious is one of those traits not usually considered a key to getting in the popular cliques.

Humans do tend to place a lot of value on things like physical appearance, strength, competitive dominance and wealth — all logical traits to favor since theoretically they would lend themselves well to genetic and resource prosperity, which is ultimately the goal of most species.

But if it were possible to achieve those things with cleverness — a strong argument for which can be made since smarts can work a problem as well if not better than muscles — it begs the question if a sharp wit should attract just as many friends.

Well, as luck would have it, there is a world where neither looks nor muscles are the preferred trait — if you’re a tiny striped primate anyway.

And if you want to climb the social ladder in lemur society, forget the beauty or the muscles, because it’s a bright mind you’ll be needing.

Lemurs, it turns out, can increase their friends and social standing by flexing their mental muscles and showing off their problem-solving skills to their peers.

Not only do they get more friends by being innovative, the more they practice a skill in the presence of others, the more popular they become, according to research published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

While it’s known primates learn from watching other primates accomplish tasks, what if any impact those skills have on their social standing is an area where studies were lacking. So the research team, led by a Princeton zoology professor, set out to gain a better understanding.

Using two groups of free-ranging ring tailed lemurs, the team observed the social interactions of each in order to form a baseline. Each group was then presented with an unusual foraging task to overcome in which a single grape was placed inside a transparent, acrylic drawer that had to be pulled open to retrieve the fruit.

In both groups, though all members had multiple opportunities to solve the task, in the end it was two juveniles — a male and a female — that figured out the drawer and scored the prize. Once the task was solved initially by the youngsters, a total of 22 other members of the groups who had watched them went on to solve it themselves, some repeatedly, and as they engaged with the drawer task, researchers noted that their interest seemed to increase.

Of note, those lemurs who already inclined to be more social within their groups experienced greater success at learning how to master the task, presumably because they were more inclined to learn from others.

However the most intriguing finding was that those who solved the task sooner and more frequently became more popular in their groups, receiving more attention and, in particular, grooming from others with no strings attached, unusual because grooming usually relies on mutual reciprocation, one of the researchers stated in a press release.

By demonstrating their individual ability to use information, problem-solving lemurs become the friends to have because their peers view them as successful and reliable sources of information, the team concluded.

Of course the forces that drive popularity are usually more complicated than a single trait, and who knows, with their intellectual value to the group established, it might have been time for a lemur make-over — hence the free grooming sessions.

Sharna Johnson is always searching for ponies. Contact her at: [email protected]