New York : Males who baby-sit children, not necessarily only their own, are likely to have greater reproductive success, claims a research on gorillas, that suggests an alternative route by which fathering behaviours might have evolved in humans. “Mountain gorillas and humans are the only great apes in which males regularly develop strong social bonds with kids, so learning about what mountain gorillas do and why helps us understand how human males may have started down the path to our more involved form of fatherhood,” said lead author Stacy Rosenbaum, post-doctoral student at the Northwestern University in the US.
According to Christopher Kuzawa, co-author and Professor at the university, the findings run counter to how we typically think of male mountain gorillas — huge, competitive and with reproduction in the group dominated by a single alpha male. “Males are spending a lot of time with groups of kids — and those who groom and rest more with them end up having more reproductive opportunities,” Kuzawa said. The new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that there is an alternative pathway by which evolution can generate this behaviour, even when males may not know who their offspring are, Rosenbaum said.