Washington, Nov 17 (ANI): Young chimpanzees play and develop much the same way as human children do, a new study has found.
Elisabetta Palagi and Giada Cordoni from the University of Pisa, Italy, found that chimpanzee solitary play peaks in infancy, while the time spent in social play was relatively constant between infants and juveniles.
However, the type of social play changed quite a bit as the animals grew up, in terms of measures like complexity and playmate choice.
In comparing these behaviours to previous work conducted with humans, the researchers found that both species show significant quantitative and qualitative development in play behaviour from infancy to juvenility.
Moreover, both chimps and humans consistently use playful facial expressions to communicate and build social networks.
The researchers also analysed playmate choice and found that both the mammals prefer peers for play partners.
The study has been recently published in the online journal PLoS ONE. (ANI)
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