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Social Touch in Apes and Dolphins

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Primates and Cetaceans

Part of the book series: Primatology Monographs ((PrimMono))

Abstract

Social touch, or physical contact among two or more individuals in a nonaggressive context, seems to play important roles among both primates and cetaceans. However, with exception of social grooming among primates, it has rarely been studied in detail. Thus, in this chapter we review the descriptions of social touch in great apes and dolphins from the literature and from our own observations. After reviewing the social grooming among various mammalian taxa, we considered various types of social touch in apes and dolphins in more detail by dividing them into following seven categories: (1) social touch between mother and infant; (2) touch in play; (3) tactile gestures; (4) social grooming; (5) touch in greeting, reassurance, and appeasement; (6) touch to/with genital areas; and (7) simple body contact. Information from scattered descriptions in the literature suggests that social touch is widespread in apes and dolphins, yet frequencies may vary greatly among species. Although there has been no single theory to explain these diverse types of social touch, we briefly review theories that might be of relevance to explaining social touch.

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Acknowledgments  

M.N. thanks the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology, the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, the Tanzania National Parks, the Mahale Mountains National Park, and the Mahale Wildlife Research Centre for permission to conduct the field research at Mahale. M.S. thanks the people of the Mikura Islands and the staff of Kamogawa Sea World, Toba Aquarium, and Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan. M.N.’s field study was financially supported by grants from Japanese MEXT (#16255007, #19255008 to T. Nishida, #16770186 to M.N.) and that of M.S. by grants from the Circle for the Promotion of Science and Engineering, the Inui Memorial Trust for Research on Animal Science, and JSPS.

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  1. JSPS Research Fellow, Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, 2-24, Tanaka-Sekiden-Cho, Sakyo, Kyoto, 606-8203, Japan

    Michio Nakamura & Mai Sakai

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  1. Michio Nakamura
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  2. Mai Sakai
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Correspondence to Michio Nakamura .

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  1. Graduate School of Science Laboratory of Human Evolution Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Juichi Yamagiwa

  2. The Swire Institute of Marine Science School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Shek O, Hong Kong SAR

    Leszek Karczmarski

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Nakamura, M., Sakai, M. (2014). Social Touch in Apes and Dolphins. In: Yamagiwa, J., Karczmarski, L. (eds) Primates and Cetaceans. Primatology Monographs. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54523-1_19

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