> gorillas were not observed visiting any of the five Ficus locations on the two days prior to the cofeeding event and visitation to figs was rare on the days after cofeeding. During ape follows, we also observed the gorilla group immediately change their travel direction to head toward chimpanzee vocalizations originating from the canopy of Ficus with ripe figs
> Affiliative interactions included play with individuals of both species engaged in chasing, wrestling, play biting, and play hitting.
> We also observed gesturing between species to initiate social interactions. Intriguingly, chimpanzees exhibited chest-beating which is a behavior characteristic of gorillas.
> In contrast to predictions of competition between species, nearly all interspecific associations were tolerant or affiliative. Aggression was observed between gorillas and chimpanzees, but did not escalate to killing as reported from Loango, Gabon (Southern et al., 2021).
Of course such similar animal cohabiting in the same area will have "social relationships". Some birds have social relationship with mammals, as evidenced in many human to bird relationships. After many years observing corvids seems to me that carrion crows and magpies do have something that could be called social relationship.
Don't want to be dismissive of the merits of this study, but to my eyes this is another "water is wet" paper. We keep insisting in this anthropocentric approach to understanding the world and it leads to plenty of biases.
You are an animal, you have social relationships with other species (your dog, ie). Asume others animals, like you, do the same.
As always, science is just as much about confirming null hypotheses as it is about disproving them. Either way can be equally good science. Having scientific evidence that X happens is much more valuable than having a hypothesis that X happens. And obviously evidence almost never conveys just a single bit of information. This paper is about how and when and where and to what degree X was observed to happen, not only whether X did happen.
Sadly, real-world Science is almost never about confirming null hypotheses. There is an enormous amount of research that never gets published for this reason; because the authors had some interesting idea and it just happened to not pan out.
I agree it's obvious that they will start to relate to each other if they cohabitate, and in that sense it's "water is wet". But the details of how exactly they relate might still be cool.
I'm not very surprised at the finding, but what if they are only interacting due to shrinking natural habitats, rather than by choice? i.e. wildlife did not have to co-exist as much before they were restricted to National Parks?
I think everyone realizes the significant of resources like food and water, but what about just "space" itself as a resource?
Choice quotes:
> gorillas were not observed visiting any of the five Ficus locations on the two days prior to the cofeeding event and visitation to figs was rare on the days after cofeeding. During ape follows, we also observed the gorilla group immediately change their travel direction to head toward chimpanzee vocalizations originating from the canopy of Ficus with ripe figs
> Affiliative interactions included play with individuals of both species engaged in chasing, wrestling, play biting, and play hitting.
> We also observed gesturing between species to initiate social interactions. Intriguingly, chimpanzees exhibited chest-beating which is a behavior characteristic of gorillas.
> In contrast to predictions of competition between species, nearly all interspecific associations were tolerant or affiliative. Aggression was observed between gorillas and chimpanzees, but did not escalate to killing as reported from Loango, Gabon (Southern et al., 2021).